


Great Divide

by Aradia17



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Trauma, long fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:09:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 26,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25037533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aradia17/pseuds/Aradia17
Summary: Ellie has a long way to go to find peace after all the violence and loss.  Dina loves her, but has her own wounds heal.  There are still far too many things unspoken between them, and Joel's memory still lingers above it all.Picking up right at the end of Part II and told through a mixture of journal entries/letters and narrative, this is the story of the year following Ellie's return to Jackson: the consequences she must face, the people she left behind, the difficulty of closure, and the slow road to learning that there are many ways for a life to matter.  Aiming for a realistic portrayal of trauma and its collateral damage, but will eventually have a happy ending.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 246





	1. Chapter 1

** Great Divide **

_"The highway has a way of playing tricks on tired eyes  
I swear that I see you riding shotgun late at night  
Seems that you're the only thing that never leaves my mind  
The only thing worth getting right  
So am I too far gone?  
Cuz I'm running home  
If only in my mind, I am somewhere  
Across that great divide."_

_\- Ira Wolf_

* * *

**PART I: RETURNING**

**ONE**

* * *

_Fuck Santa Barbara. Fuck me._

_Somehow I found the energy to get the boat up the coast a bit, to get away from that place . . . I don’t even know where I am now. I ended up back at Abby’s boat somehow. She wasn’t there. I don’t know what I would have done if she was._

_I remembered noticing medical supplies on board earlier, some antibiotic cream and gauze. Not enough for these injuries, but something. I took everything I could find and cauterized the wounds, but I still feel so weak._

_I kept going until I passed out for a while and the waves knocked my boat up against a tall cliff face. Some rocks on one side seem to be making this little pocket of calm water, and the waves are holding me here now as the tide goes in and out. It’s not so bad. Would be hard to get jumped like this, at least._

_It’s daytime now. My face feels warm. I don’t know how long it’s been. I think I’ll just rest for a while._

* * *

_I think I’m going to die here. In this boat, by this shore that I thought was so beautiful when I first saw it. I kept picturing Dina seeing it, thinking how happy it would make her. Now it just feels like another version of the same hell._

_It’s night again, but there’s some light on the horizon. I’m not sure if the sun just set or if it’s rising. My skin feels so hot. The antibiotics aren’t working._

_Is this how Joel felt that winter?_

_I feel like I’ve read a hundred notes written by dying people. Sometimes it’s like that’s all that’s left of the world. Like someday there will be a museum for humans that’s just millions of letters scribbled onto random pieces of paper by people dying or infected, trying pointlessly to say goodbye to the people they loved. I’ve thought about what I would write before, but now that it’s here, I can’t think of a thing._

_Dina, if you ever read this . . . fuck. Who am I kidding? You’ll never read this._

* * *

_I can’t really tell if I’m awake or not anymore. I feel like I’m losing my mind._

_Sometimes I’m back on the beach. Sometimes I kill Abby. Sometimes she kills me. Sometimes the fucking slavers show up and kill us both._

_Or I’m back in the basement, and Joel is dying and I’m trying to scream, but I can’t. I’m trying to tell him I’m sorry, but my voice doesn’t work._

_Or I’m the one Abby’s killing, and Joel is yelling at me and telling me to get the fuck up. He sounds so angry._

_Or Abby isn’t even there, and I’m holding the golf club. He tells me he’s sorry and I swing._

_I’m starting to lose track of what really happened._

_I see so many faces. Abby’s friends. Jesse. Tommy. That Scar kid. The wolves. The slavers. The Fireflies. Riley. They drift in and out. They say things, but I can’t remember what. I cover my ears, but I can’t shut them out._

_Sometimes I see something good. The farmhouse. Dina and JJ. I see us dancing in the kitchen, painting and singing. I feel Dina holding me at night._

_Everything hurts so much. I just want it to end._

_Joel, I’m sorry. I wish you’d just let me die._

* * *

_Dina, Potato - I love you more than I could ever say._

_I’m an idiot and I’m so fucking sorry._

* * *

_I’m not dead._

_I don’t know how I keep fucking surviving when I shouldn’t, but somehow I did it again._

_I woke up feeling like I can think again. I’m not sure how much time has passed, but the fever seems to be gone. The wounds don’t look infected._

_I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this weak. Sitting up takes all the energy I have. I’m so hungry, but there’s no food left. One of the paddles drifted away at some point. I can’t get the boat away from this cliff. It would be really stupid if I survived the fever and died stuck in a boat, but I guess I shouldn’t count myself saved yet._

_Gotta wait for the tide to go out._

* * *

_It took me the better part of five days to make it from the coast to this forest area further inland. I found a fire lookout tower that seems to be pretty far away from everything. I’ve just been laying low here for a bit. I can see for miles, and I scavenged enough food and water to last a while._

_Wyoming has a lot of these towers. I remember when Joel told me what they were for, I thought he was screwing with me. Imagine – having nothing to watch for except fires._

_Getting here was rough. There are Rattlers everywhere. I don’t think I could have fought them like this. My side hurts like hell, and I can’t hold a gun very well. The bow shakes when I try to draw it. I need to figure out what to do next._

_I almost scratched out everything I wrote before this, but . . . I don’t know. I guess I’ll just leave it for now._

* * *

_Should I go back? Will you be there? Will you want to see me?_

_Where else is left to go?_

* * *

**Author's Note:** Thanks for reading! This story will be chronological and focused on a single plot, but it will contain a variety of formats and styles. The first several chapters will be short, and will rotate between Ellie and Dina's perspectives. Anything in first-person/italics is a journal entry or a letter. Anything in standard font and third-person is more traditional narrative structure, which will come a bit later. Ultimately, I want to give these characters a happy ending they deserve, but I also want to do so realistically, so it will take time.

I own nothing represented here. The Last of Us characters/plot are the property of Naughty Dog and Sony. The lyrics at the beginning are from one of my favorite songs by the great Ira Wolf. I would highly recommend giving her a listen! 


	2. Chapter 2

_Dear Ellie,_

_Writing this was Maria’s idea. She thinks that there’s some healing to be found in writing a letter to you that you’ll never see. She says that sometimes that’s the only way you can say the things you need to say to a person. Of course, when I asked her if she’d tried this with Tommy she dodged the question, so I don’t know how much I trust the advice._

_But I suppose there’s no harm in trying. I don’t know what else to do with any of this._

_I haven’t been able to sleep since you left. I keep picturing that moment in the kitchen, wondering if I could have said something different, if I could have loved you better, if I could have convinced you to stay. JJ misses you, and he doesn’t understand. He always seems distracted now. He looks around sometimes and I know he’s looking for you. I hate you for doing that to him._

_Part of me wanted to go after you, but everyone told me that was a bad idea. I think Maria would have actually locked me in a cell if I’d tried. And she would be right to do it; they’re all right. But I still don’t know what to do with all these feelings. I don’t know how to make sense of the fact that you left. I want to scream at you. I want to feel your lips on mine. I want you to explain what could ever be more important than us._

_But instead, I’m writing a stupid letter to no one._

_I keep thinking about that day all those years ago, the first day we really connected. You’d been here a few months by then, but you always kept to yourself. We were out looking for firewood under all the autumn trees, and even though we’d never really talked before, it just felt so easy. We just went right to the deep stuff. I told you about Talia, and you told me about Riley. You said you weren’t sure how comfortable you wanted to get in Jackson because you didn’t want it to hurt when things ended. I remember you were doing that thing you do, where you won’t look at me and you try to act tough, but your eyes are so sad. I remember how surprised you were when I took your hand and told you I wouldn’t leave you. I remember the way you smiled._

_I kept my promise, for whatever that’s worth to you._

_Love,  
_ _Dina_


	3. Chapter 3

**THREE**

_Desert. Again. Still._

_I fucking hate the fucking desert._

_But I guess everyone else does too, because it’s been as empty as it was on the way here. Which is good. It’s been slow going, but I’m getting stronger. I can shoot the smaller guns now, but the bow is still tough and I haven’t figured out how to manage the kickback on the rifles yet. I’d rather not take my chances._

_I’ve been walking at night, mostly. It’s too hot in the day. I’m close to Vegas now. Gonna keep avoiding that place like the plague. (Get it?)_

* * *

_I took a wrong turn somewhere, ended up on a different highway than the one I came in on. I’ve probably been on the wrong road for days now. I only noticed at all because the desert started changing._

_I don’t know where I am now, but I’ve never seen anything like it. Things aren’t just flat and tan here. There are these huge rock towers everywhere, some of them wide and flat on top, like they could lift a whole city into the sky. The soil has this reddish color to it. It’s kind of peaceful out here, and I can usually see for a long way in every direction. It’s nice not to worry about what might sneak up on me._

_I guess_ some _of the desert doesn’t suck._

_This place reminds me of a painting Joel had in his house. It was pretty simple, watercolor or something, not very realistic. I think he dug it out of some old cabin. But I keep thinking about the colors and the shapes. I think about my drawing room, and how I would paint this view. I tried to sketch it here, but it just doesn’t work without the colors._

* * *

_I spent an extra day in the red desert, laying by this creek I found. It was nice to clean up properly and drink without rationing. My side has healed pretty well, and it seems like I’ve almost got my full strength back. My hand still hurts like hell, though._

_I watched the sunset tonight and thought about how it made the world look so much more beautiful than it actually is. Red rocks and purple sky and beams of light that make the water turn to gold. Like nothing is wrong. I haven’t heard any sound in two days besides the creek and the wind._

_Is this New Mexico? Dina used to describe it like this. I wish I could ask her._

_Maybe I needed the break, but I don’t know how I feel about it now. Guilty, I guess. Like I should be moving. But I don’t even know if I’m making the right choice by going back to Jackson. I don’t think Dina is eager to see me. The way ~~we~~ I left things . . . Am I going to hurt her more if I go back? Or if I don’t?_

_It’s getting dark now. Probably time to start walking._

* * *

_I dreamed about Joel last night. The basement again. Abby and the golf club again._

_But then it was me, hitting Abby with the club. Abby like she was on the beach, like a skeleton, barely alive. Joel was holding her friend Owen down while he yelled._

_And then it was that Scar kid, standing over me with the club. Telling me I brought it on myself for drowning Abby on the beach. But Abby was there too, strong again, holding down Dina._

_You’d think the same dream would stop being awful at some point._

* * *

_I froze up again today. I was in the convenience store of this old gas station, off by itself in the middle of nowhere. It was the only building I could see from horizon to horizon. Just dust and heat and this one outpost._

_I was sloppy. You usually don’t see infected in places like this, there’s not enough to keep them around. So I didn’t sweep the building very well before I started looking for food, and I didn’t notice the runner until it was practically on top of me._

_I couldn’t get my gun up in time, and it pinned me to the ground. The next thing I remember is all the blood – pooling on the floor, reflecting on my knife, covering my arms._

_But then I was seeing different blood. Different bodies. I could feel the weight of someone on top of me, twisting my arms, holding me against the cold floor. I saw Joel’s blood slowly expanding on the ground, creeping toward me. I wondered if it would reach me._

_And then I felt the knife in my own hand, the sharp movements I made as I demanded information from Nora. The blade slicing through skin and the screams slicing through air. I heard the gurgling of blood in Owen’s throat. I saw it draining out of Mel’s body as I opened her jacket and realized what I’d done._

_Waves. Iron. Salt. Rain._

_My body wanted to throw up, but it couldn’t. I just heaved on the floor for a minute after coming back to myself. I wish I could have gotten it all out so easily, but instead the nausea just lingered._

_I’m fucking lucky that runner was alone._

_I don’t know how to make this stop._


	4. Chapter 4

_Dear Ellie,_

_You’ve been gone for months now. The seasons have changed. JJ has gotten bigger. He said his first word yesterday: “Mama.” I was so excited, and Jesse’s parents were there to see it, and it was this beautiful moment of pure joy. Then I thought about you, and how happy it would have made you. I thought about how I always pictured that moment being the three of us in the farm house, how that word could have been directed at either of us once. That took the joy out of things pretty quickly._

_Did you think about everything you would miss? Did you understand what you were giving up? Or were you just too lost in the pain by then?_

_I know how hurt you were. You might not realize it, but I watched you fall apart. I had a front row seat to the whole thing. I remember our first kiss at the dance – you were so shy and awkward, so surprised. You had no idea I’d liked you for months, even when my flirting was so obvious it was embarrassing. I loved that about you, though. I loved how gentle you were in the middle of this shitty world. You were so strong, but still so kind. You never thought much of yourself, though, and I never understood how you couldn’t see what I saw._

_What happened to Joel was awful. My heart broke when I found you there, and there was never a question in my mind that I would follow you to Seattle. I know why you did what you did. You went for vengeance, but I went for you. I would have done anything if it would have taken your pain away._

_Maybe we were both stupid to think it would be that easy. Even as it escalated, I was with you. After Nora, I know you hated yourself. You scared me that night, but not for the reasons you thought. You scared me because I realized then that it wasn’t helping you. That it was making it worse. But how could I say that? We were too far in._

_Even after that last night in the theater, after Jesse, after that slow and awful trek home, I never thought less of you. But you thought less of yourself. You started to disappear._

_It was good for a while, wasn’t it? We were happy on that farm, right? We laughed, and danced, and enjoyed so many perfect moments. You were such a good mom to JJ, even though you didn’t have to be. There were times I would watch the two of you together and it was like the whole world just suddenly shifted into focus. I understood the song lyrics and the poems, the hope and possibility you see in all that art from before the outbreak. It didn’t matter how bad everything else could be, because I had you._

_I know we were both lying to ourselves sometimes. You had so many nightmares. I cried when you weren’t looking. We stopped talking about the people we were grieving for, about everything that happened, both of us hoping we could lock it in the past and never look at it again. I know it didn’t work. But we could have figured it out. I wasn’t going anywhere. I would have woken up with you and talked you back to sleep every night for the rest of our lives._

_Ellie, I mean it with all my heart when I say my love for you never wavered through all the moments you thought it would. I didn’t go through all of that with you because I wanted anything in return. I didn’t resent you for it._

_But I_ do _resent you for leaving. For not sticking by me the way I did you. For giving up our child’s first words for more blood and death. I_ do _think less of you for that._

_I really hope it was worth it for you._

_Dina_


	5. Chapter 5

_There must be some sort of cosmic irony in the fact that the easiest way to make this trip goes directly through Salt Lake City. I thought about taking the long way around, but ~~the thought of going through new territory is exhausting~~ I probably didn’t actually want to._

_I wasn’t going to do it. I know it’s stupid. I know it’s a waste of time. But self-control has never been my strong suit and I went right back to the fucking Firefly hospital._

_I don’t know what I was looking for. Something more, maybe? Something to make it all make sense? I’d planned to search it more thoroughly the first time, but Joel showed up before I’d even had time to process the recording._

_That day. God. Fuck that day._

_For better or worse, I knew no one was coming after me this time. So I went through it all, top to bottom. I spent a full day and half scouring every corner. I found a bunch of Clickers, a lot of random supplies left behind, and a few notes and recordings forgotten in drawers. No brilliant new revelations. Mostly just people talking about not knowing what to do after losing the cure._

_After losing me._

_In that whole hospital, that’s all I kept finding – people giving up because of what Joel did . . . to me? For me? I don’t know. They all seemed to think that day was fate. The only immune girl, and the only doctor who could do anything about it._

_I’ve been picturing it all day. Joel running through those same hallways, killing everyone, killing the doctor. Lying to me in the car._

_FUCK , JOEL!!!_

_Why couldn’t you have just let me do it? You know I wanted to! It’s all I talked about! After Riley, and Tess, and Sam, and every fucking horrible thing we went through on that journey … I needed it to matter and it DIDN’T, because of YOU! _

_And what the hell did it give me? Time to watch you die? To kill more people than I can count? To see with full clarity how wrecked this world is? Even though I could have fucking saved it!_

_What would you think of who I’ve become with all this time you bought me?_

* * *

_I guess it isn’t surprising I dreamt of Joel again. This time it wasn’t the basement, but the porch. That last time I saw him. When I finally started talking to him after two years of avoiding and silence._

_Except in my dream, I said everything I tried to hold back that night._

_I screamed. I told him how much I hated him for what he did, for what he stole from me, for what he let me become._

_I admitted how much it all hurt, how awful I feel every time I find someone that maybe I could have saved if they actually made the cure, how my life wasn’t worth the death of so many other people._

_And in the end, I hugged him, and suddenly I was fourteen again and he was alive and David was dead on the ground and I was so grateful he was there to hold me._

_When I woke up, I was crying._

* * *

_These last few nights, I’ve haven’t dreamt as much about Joel and Abby. Now it’s more Dina and JJ. Sometimes Jesse. Sometimes other things from before._

_I dreamed of making love with her again, of waking up next to her, of that blissful feeling of safety I’ve never felt anywhere else. Our first kiss at the dance. The way she smiles and laughs so easily, even when she hasn’t had it easy either. JJ's huge grin and untarnished fascination with the world. Those few months at the farmhouse before I stopped being able to push the demons away. I sleep okay on those nights._

_But they aren’t all happy either. There are the dreams of the morning I left, of the look on her face, the tears in her eyes. The ones of her bleeding on the theater floor when I wasn’t sure she would wake up. When I thought she would die because of me. Last night, I dreamed that someone shot her through the window while I was doing the dishes in the other room. I woke up shaking and screaming._

_I think those dreams are the scariest of all, ~~because what if~~ _

_No. Can’t go there. Just need to get home._


	6. Chapter 6

_Ellie,_

_This is my last letter. I can’t keep doing this to myself. I can’t keep feeling that surge of hope every time someone knocks on the door, every time I see a woman in the distance with hair like yours. I can’t handle any more of the disappointment that follows. JJ is getting bigger by the day, and Jackson is growing, and there’s a whole life here that I’m missing out on while this part of me holds onto you. It’s time to let go._

_You’re probably dead, and I’ll never even know what happened._ _You of all people know what it feels like to lose someone you love and never get closure. Fuck you for doing it to me._

_I hope to hell I’m wrong. I hope you’re okay. I hope you found what you were looking for. But it’s not my problem anymore._

_Goodbye, Ellie._

_Dina_

* * *

_I’ll be at the farmhouse by tomorrow night._

_I realized this morning that I haven’t spoken to another person since I told Abby to go. I don’t know how long it’s been since that happened. I’ve been having a hard time processing things like that. It feels like years. It feels like yesterday._

_I still don’t know what to say when I see her. I’ve had so much time to figure it out, and still, nothing. What the hell can I say?_

_Or really . . . if I’m being honest . . . I don’t know what to be when I see her. I don’t know who I am now._

_~~I’m not the person she fell in love with~~ _

_~~I’m too broken for her to~~ _

_~~I feel like a monster~~ _

_It doesn’t matter, I’ll figure it out. Dina, I’m coming._

* * *

_The house is empty. Dina and JJ are gone._

_The first thing I noticed when I got close enough was how quiet it was. The animals weren’t in the pasture. The gardens were dead. Dina loved those sheep, cared for those vegetable plants like they were people. She would never have let them die._

_I walked through every room before I could convince myself I wasn’t going to turn a corner and find them dead._

_What if I had? It was risky enough for both of us to live out here together, and I fucking left them here alone. I left Dina crying in the kitchen. They could have died because I’m a selfish piece of shit._

_I shouldn’t have come back._

* * *

_I’m going to go Jackson. Try to find them. I figure that’s the only place they could have gone._

_Everything is empty except the one room with all my stuff. The pictures I drew, old things of Joel’s. The guitar I can’t play anymore._

_She probably doesn’t want to see me. If she doesn’t, I’ll go. But I came all this way. I have to try. ~~God, I hope she wants to see me~~._


	7. Chapter 7

**PART II: FALL**

**SEVEN**

* * *

The look on Dina’s face during their reunion wouldn’t leave Ellie’s mind anytime soon. Dina had always worn her emotions so openly. It was one of the things that Ellie loved most about her, one of the things that first caught her attention. In Ellie’s experience, everyone was guarded – stoic, reserved, only showing how they actually felt after months or years of trust being built. But not Dina. She had always been so quick to smile, to share, to yell, sometimes even to cry. 

That day was no exception. Dina had been stepping absentmindedly off her porch, squinting into her bag in the fading evening light when she’d looked up and frozen in place. Standing in the street like a ghost, Ellie had seemed every bit as startled. The two stared at each other for a length of time neither could quantify, and Ellie watched Dina’s face melt from shock, to relief, to horror, to fury. 

Despite having had what felt like an eternity to think about what she wanted to say, Ellie still came up empty. “Hi,” was all she could manage.

The exchange that followed wasn’t a fight – that would have required both sides to participate. This was a verbal flaying, and Ellie didn’t even try to defend herself. There was nothing to defend. She knew she deserved far worse than Dina’s words, even as they tore her apart more effectively than any blade or bullet.

_“How dare you show up here like this, you selfish asshole?”_

_“I thought you were dead, you get that right?”_

_“Fuck you, Ellie!”_

Ellie could feel the eyes of the town on the two of them as Dina’s barrage continued, much as she had felt their gaze on her way in. She had gone from being one of them to being an outsider, a curiosity, something to whisper about. Maybe she should have heeded Maria’s terse advice at the gate to take some time to clean up before engaging in this conversation, but it was too late now.

“Do you even have anything to say to me?” Dina demanded, the flood of her words finally slowing to a trickle. “Or are you just going to stand there?”

It was the same question that had haunted Ellie since the moment she left. What _could_ she say? 

“I’m sorry,” she offered softly, knowing the words were pathetic, but hoping their sincerity might matter.

It didn’t. “Good to know,” snapped Dina coldly. 

The look she gave Ellie was withering, a sharp contrast to the love and affection she’d grown used to seeing in those eyes. It made her want to disappear.

“I have to go,” Dina said abruptly. She turned and began walking away without another moment’s hesitation.

“Wait!” Ellie called out desperately, finding her voice. Dina paused without turning around. “Can I . . . Can I see you tomorrow? Can we talk, please?”

The silence was agony.

“I’ll think about it,” Dina said finally.

The relief melted some of the tension in Ellie’s body, allowing her to exhale for what felt like the first time in hours. Before she could even express her thanks, Dina had disappeared around the corner of the building down the street. And then it was just Ellie, standing alone in the twilight road of the town she once considered home, surrounded by dark houses and groups of people who had stopped to watch and whisper. 

It was likely only those busybodies and the tattered remains of her own pride that kept her from falling to the ground right there. Instead, she avoided their eyes and made her way back in the opposite direction.

The stares were nothing new. This had started long before now, the first time she’d turned up unexpectedly at the gates of Jackson covered in blood and filth and nursing horrific injuries. That time, at least, she hadn’t been alone – Dina and Tommy had been stumbling in alongside her. Ellie had probably been the least startling of their group that day. A broken arm was little compared to a missing eye and wrecked leg, and nothing at all compared to the news of Jesse’s death and Dina’s pregnancy. Almost everyone in Jackson had given all three of them a wide berth for a while, but nothing could keep them from hearing the talk. Once Maria caught wind of the things people were saying, it had stopped quickly. But from that day on, the three of them had gone from neighbors to oddities, uncomfortable reminders of the vicious world that lay beyond the town perimeter. The sense of alienation was one of many things that drove Ellie and Dina out to the farmhouse not long after.

That wasn’t an option this time, so Ellie set course toward what seemed to be the only thing still waiting for her in Jackson: her old garage apartment, box-filled and dusty, emptied of anything that once made it feel like home. It seemed a fitting reception.

* * *

Ellie had no way of knowing that Dina’s confident retreat had shattered only yards out of her sight, when the dark-haired woman’s knees gave way and she sat hard on the cold autumn ground in the shadowed path between two houses, holding her hand over her mouth to stifle the sobs.

Dina meant every acidic word she said, could likely have carried on far longer than she actually had. But what she hadn’t shown Ellie – what she had worked hard to hold back until she was out of sight – was _this_. The visceral pain she felt at seeing the woman she would once have called the love of her life looking so utterly changed. She had seen Ellie in bad shape many times: the basement on the night of Joel’s murder, the night she returned from killing Nora, in the wake of Abby’s carnage in the theater. She had seen Ellie bloodied, broken, hateful, terrified, near death. But she had never seen her look anything like this. 

This Ellie was a ghost, a stranger. Dina almost hadn’t recognized her. As thin as she’d been when she left, she was skeletal now; covered in small scrapes, patchy dirt, and dried blood that looked like it had been caked onto her skin and clothes for quite some time. She’d been clutching her left hand with her right, and although Dina hadn’t been able to get a good look at it, she’d seen bits of angry red scarring. 

But the most haunting quality wasn’t a tangible one – it was the absence of the very spirit that used to define who Ellie was. Even in some of her darkest moments, Dina had been able to see the woman she’d fallen in love with. The strong, protective, sarcastic, reserved, quietly artistic girl she had been taken with on some level from the first day they met. 

For the first time, Dina couldn’t see any of that in the person around the corner. She didn’t know what had happened to Ellie in the last few months, but the results made Dina feel nearly ill with fear and sadness. Part of her wanted to run back, to hug her tightly, to try to bring her back to herself.

 _No,_ Dina scolded herself sharply at the impulse. She took several deep breaths and wiped her eyes, looking up at the stars, forcibly pushing the thoughts out of her mind. She had worked hard to move forward, to begin building something new. She had a son waiting for her at the day care that was going to close any minute, and a different kind of family in Jesse’s parents, who were waiting to host her for dinner. 

Ellie had every chance to be part of this, and she gave it up. 

Steadying herself and heading back toward the lights of main street, Dina pushed the thoughts of Ellie from her mind. 

* * *

**Author's Note:** A huge thank you to everyone reading and commenting!! As a head's up, what's posted has caught up to what I have written, so there will be slightly longer delays between updates moving forward, but my hope is to keep working steadily! 


	8. Chapter 8

**EIGHT**

* * *

_Maria was right – I look fucking terrible. No wonder Dina looked so freaked out. Before the yelling, anyway._

_Joel would lose his shit if he saw me like this. Thinking about it is almost funny, until I realize that it’s not. Until I think about how much I wish he was up in the house right now. How much I wish I could go talk to him. I remember all the nights I fell asleep on his couch after we stayed up late watching a movie, all the mornings I would wake up covered in a blanket that wasn’t there before. He always cooked breakfast those mornings. The food was always burnt and I always made fun of him for it, but I’d kill to eat it again now._

_Maybe that was a poor choice of words . . ._

_What would I say if I could talk to him? What would he think of everything I’ve done?_

_Would he tell me to keep trying with Dina? Or just remind me that “things happen, and we move on”? How do you know whether to move on or keep fighting? I don’t think I’ve done a great job of figuring that one out so far._

_She said all the things I expected her to, and it hurt as much as I figured it would. She’s right. I left. I abandoned her after everything she did for me. I abandoned ~~our son~~ JJ. _

_(I probably can’t think of him that way anymore, can I? Fuck . . .)_

* * *

It took over an hour for Ellie to reach a point she would consider reasonably clean. She didn’t have the energy to haul and boil water for a proper bath, so she settled for an aggressive scrub and a full-head dunk into a basin that was nearly ice cold. The shock of the temperature was startling, but it worked as an odd sort of relief, giving her something to focus on outside of what lingered in her mind.

When she finally finished and risked another glance in the mirror, she felt a bit more human. She studied her own reflection for a long time, a sight she had steadfastly avoided for months. Her hair had grown out a bit, nearly back to the length it had been before she cut it on the farm. There were deep lines under her eyes, and her bones were more pronounced than she’d ever seen them. 

Despite that, she thought she looked younger with all the dirt scrubbed away, a bit more like what she used to see when she looked in the mirror. There were only a couple of shallow scratches left healing on the side of her face, a few yellowing bruises on her arm and collarbone from the tumble she’d taken down a ravine a few days ago. 

And then, of course, there was her mangled hand. Flexing her fingers experimentally, she could still feel the ache where the missing ones used to be. It had healed up as well as anyone could expect in the circumstances, but it looked horrific – a violent red color with jagged edges, underlined by the blistered scar of a bite mark. She would have to do something about that.

Not tonight, though. She contemplated the bare mattress, stripped of blankets long ago when she and Dina had gathered all their things and moved outside the town limits. The furniture was still there, the bed itself and the couch, a few boxes of less important things she’d never gotten around to moving the first time. Enough that she could scrounge anything essential, but not enough to make it feel like home.

As usual, she was exhausted in a way that didn’t lend itself to sleeping. 

It wasn’t a conscious decision that led her toward Joel’s house, rather some absentminded draw that she would have tucked away if she’d processed it fully. The house loomed dark and quiet, but Ellie was comforted to find the old rocking chair still settled in the corner of the porch. 

She thought again of their final conversation. His coffee and guitar. The snow glittering under the porch light. The way they’d both tried so hard to control their emotions. How it had seemed a tentative beginning instead of an unexpected end.

Curling up on the rocking chair, she pulled her legs to her chest and rested her head atop her knees, staring out into the darkness.

That was where Maria found her sometime later, having drifted into a light sleep in spite of herself. Ellie jolted awake roughly at the sound of footsteps on hollow wood, flailing for the rifle that wasn’t there. It took her a moment to orient herself and start breathing.

Unflappable as always, Maria waited calmly out of reach until Ellie could process her surroundings. Once the younger woman was more grounded, Maria moved forward and dropped an overstuffed canvas bag next to the rocking chair.

“Some supplies to tide you over while you get settled,” Maria explained, foregoing any greetings or pleasantries. “Some sheets and blankets, soap, a set of old clothes. There’s some dinner in there, too. I expect you’ll have eaten it by the time I come back for the dish.”

Maria always had a way of casually making commands that weren’t easy to argue with.

“Thanks,” said Ellie, genuinely grateful for the gesture.

“You look better.”

Ellie said nothing, and for a while, the two women stood on the dark porch in silence. 

“Heard you didn’t take my advice back at the gate,” Maria continued wryly after a time. 

Thinking again of Dina’s look of horror, Ellie winced. “Did you . . . talk to Dina?”

“Not yet, but I’ve heard about it from half the town by now. You know how this place is – you whisper something at the south end and it’ll reach the north before you can walk over.” Maria shook her head. “I would have lost my mind living in a place like this back in the old world.”

Ellie just nodded, fiddling with the strap of the canvas bag. Seeming unaffected by Ellie’s lack of engagement, Maria again allowed the conversation to lapse into silence.

“I think she hates me,” Ellie whispered eventually.

“Did she say that?”

“Not directly, but the look on her face. The tone of her voice . . .”

“Ellie, I mean this with affection, I really do – but what exactly did you expect? You caused that girl a lot of pain.”

There was something about hearing someone say it out loud that made the reality hit harder. She pictured Dina again, pleading with her to stay. Fiercely independent Dina, who had looked death in the eye on more than one occasion without a single request for mercy, who had never begged for anything. Ellie had pushed her to that point and still walked away. She felt the familiar sting of shame.

“Am I making it worse being here?”

Maria regarded her quietly for a long time. “If you’re looking for someone to give you permission to run, you know better than to ask me,” she said sternly. “I’m sure leaving would feel easier in a lot of ways. And if that’s what you want to do, then so be it. But if you want to stay, you need to be prepared to put the work in. You can’t keep looking for a way out.”

“I’m not –” Ellie began arguing instinctively, but she stopped herself. If she were honest with herself, she realized part of her might be doing exactly what Maria suggested. 

“Do you _want_ to be here?”

_Do I?_

“I don’t know,” Ellie admitted softly. 

“Well, that might be a good place to start.” 

“It’s just . . . what if I can’t fix this?” Ellie asked slowly, voicing the fear she hesitated to give name.

“Then you build up something for yourself,” the older woman replied promptly, as though it were he most obvious thing in the world. “You have some patience, you put in the work, you move forward.”

Ellie couldn’t think of how to explain how deeply her exhaustion ran, how to articulate to someone else just how little energy she had left for moving forward. But she knew Maria would have no sympathy. 

What hit harder was knowing Joel would have said the same thing. _Things happen, and we move on._

“How’s Tommy doing?” Ellie asked tentatively instead.

Maria’s answer was a moment coming. “He’s making do.”

Although her tone betrayed none of it, Ellie could read the pain she was masking. She thought of Tommy as he used to be – a gentler version of Joel in some ways, capable of picking the good out of all the misery, quick to welcome people into his life, deeply loyal to anyone he considered family. In those last years of her estrangement with Joel, he had always made it a point to keep checking in on her and making sure she was okay.

The man she’d last seen in the farmhouse was a different person. 

“Maria, I . . .” Ellie drew a shuddering breath as she tried to gather her thoughts. “Things are so fucked up . . . and I know how much of that is my fault. I just want to say –”

“Don’t,” Maria cut her off abruptly in a tone that allowed for no disagreement. “Tommy’s a grown man. He’s responsible for his own choices.”

“I know, but if I hadn’t –”

“Not another word. Save your apologies for Dina. You don’t owe me any.”

Ellie swallowed the words again. She didn’t know what to do with all the apologies she had prepared that now seemed unwanted.

Clearing her throat, Maria straightened and tucked her hands into her pockets. “It’s getting late, and that food’s getting cold. I’ll leave you to it.” Despite the proclamation, she stopped again at the top of the steps, pausing to look at the house itself. “You don’t have to live in the garage, by the way. House is still free. It may as well stay in the family.”

Stunned by both the kindness of the offer and the novelty of the idea, Ellie couldn’t think of anything to say before Maria continued down the stairs and back into the moonless night. Ellie sat there for a long time, staring at the drawn curtains in the windows and the peeling paint on the door.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note:** Thank you to everyone for the kind comments and interest! This was a hard chapter to write, but I have a plan for the rest of the story and hope to continue updating as consistently as I can to get it finished. Hope you continue to enjoy!

* * *

**NINE**

_Ellie,_

_I know you want to see me. From what Maria says, you’ve just holed up in that damn garage, and I know what you’re waiting for. And it’s not fucking fair._

_It’s not fair of you to show up like this, standing in the street looking beaten to hell, surprising me in the middle of an otherwise good day. I’ve worked my ass off to build a life without you! I told you exactly what to expect that night. I told you that if you left, I wouldn’t be waiting for you. If you didn’t believe me, that’s your fucking problem._

_I hate you for leaving, and I hate you even more for showing up like this and tearing open all the wounds I’ve been trying to heal. I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple of days telling people exactly how much I fucking hate you right now._

_But I also kind of hate myself, because what I’m not telling people is how much it hurts to see you like this. How your pain still causes me pain, even after everything that’s happened. How part of me wants to ignore all my pride and throw away my standards and run to you right now._

_I want to be over you so badly I could scream, and I fucking hate that I’m not._

_When I started writing this, I thought maybe I’d actually give it to you, but I can’t tell you this. How can I tell you that I still love you, but I also don’t think I can be with you? It would hurt you too much._

_So I guess I’m still just writing letters to no one._

_Dina_

* * *

_It’s been a few days now. I haven’t heard from Dina._

_Maria’s been bringing me food every morning and evening, but we haven’t talked much since that first night. I’ve mostly just been laying around my old place, feeling sorry for myself like the asshole I am. Sometimes I pretend I’m not here when she knocks and she just leaves the food outside the door._

_I’m trying to eat. It’s a work in progress._

_I’ve been thinking a lot about what Maria said that night. Am I looking for a way out? Do I want to be here?_

_I want to be with Dina and JJ. But I suppose that doesn’t answer the question._

_In a lot of ways, it felt easier out there. Survival is always simple: food, water, shelter. Kill or be killed. The moment you’re in and the moment coming next. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for emotions or memories or regrets._

_Fucking Bill. I thought he was crazy. Maybe he’s the only one still sane._

* * *

_I feel like I’ve forgotten how to talk. Like a few months on my own caused my vocal cords to rust. The words are in my head. I have so much to say I can get lost in it sometimes, but when I try to say it out loud it’s like there’s nothing._

_How do I explain that when explaining it requires the thing I can’t do?_

* * *

_Maria left a note with breakfast. Dina said she’ll see me._

_I don’t know how to do this._

* * *

The sun had just dropped behind the mountains and plunged Jackson into its prolonged dusk as Ellie reached the entrance to the Tipsy Bison. Lights were turning on along the main street as the early darkness fell, low bulbs and flickering lanterns and strings hung festively between street lamps. 

The bustle of the town’s center did nothing to calm Ellie’s nerves as she stood anxiously trying to gather them before entering the pub. She had been back nearly a week, but the lingering looks reminded her she hadn’t really seen anyone since that first night. Even without the piercing curiosity of her neighbors, the atmosphere of town had been hard on her since Seattle. There was something about crowds that made her heart pound and her back stiffen. She found she could never relax around so many people, that she was always watching everything around her a little too closely.

Drawing a deep breath, she pushed the memories aside and opened the door before she could get lost too deeply in her own head.

The pub was mercifully still somewhat empty, and she was grateful that Dina had chosen a quieter time of day for meeting in public. A few people offered awkward greetings as she went past – some gruff nods, a few _hellos_ tinged with superficiality, and a couple of smiles that seemed a bit more genuine. But even those warmer greetings felt tentative in a way that bordered on fearful, and Ellie couldn’t help but linger on the thought that she was now someone others were scared of.

Maria was behind the bar as Ellie drew closer, and the older woman offered her nothing but a gesture toward the back and a mug of liquid she must have had prepared for Ellie’s arrival. Ellie thanked her and took the mug without question, draining half of it in one long sip. The drink was noticeably weaker than the pub’s standard fare, which Ellie suspected was intentional, but it was enough to send a trail of warmth down her throat and encourage her to cross the last steps toward the table in the farthest corner where Dina sat nursing a large mug of her own.

Despite all her worries, Ellie’s first thought was how beautiful Dina looked. She felt the same surge of love she always did when she looked at her, a feeling of mingled warmth, awe, and peace. Except now it was tempered by sadness and regret.

Although Dina must have seen her some time ago, she seemed determined to study the drink in her hands until Ellie drew close enough that she couldn’t pretend any longer. The forced smile was worse than the performed avoidance, and it took Ellie all the strength she had to appear calm. 

“Hey,” Ellie greeted, awkwardly lingering behind the chair a moment too long before sitting down. 

“Hi.”

The silence was agony for them both, as each sat gripping their drinks just a bit too firmly, feeling the impact of the gap between them that had never existed before.

“Thanks for meeting me,” said Ellie genuinely.

Dina nodded, glancing up at Ellie for a moment before looking down again. “You look better.”

“Yeah . . . sorry about that. I probably should have listened to Maria about taking a shower.” Ellie tried to force a laugh, but it sounded brittle and sharp, and Dina didn’t react.

More silence.

“How’s JJ?”

“He’s good,” Dina said, still staring at her drink. “He’s grown a lot. Jesse’s parents have been a huge help.”

Ellie wasn’t sure if the rebuke between the lines was intentional or not, but she felt it all the same.

“I’ve really missed him,” she admitted, her voice shaking a bit. “And you.”

For a moment, Ellie thought she might have pushed Dina back into fury, but the look on her face faded instead into something more like a wince. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and controlled.

“Well, we’ve been here the whole time.”

“I know.” Ellie felt tears in the corners of her eyes. “This is all on me, I know that.”

Before Ellie could form an apology or anything remotely adequate, Dina took a large sip of her drink and changed the subject.

“So – Abby’s dead?”

“Uh . . . no, actually.”

Dina frowned slightly. “I’m surprised you’d come back without finding her,” she said bluntly. “Seemed to be the only thing that mattered to you.”

“I . . . I found her,” Ellie said softly, unable to look Dina in the eyes. The sting of her last comment lingered. “I let her go.”

Dina was visibly startled. “Why?” was all she managed to ask.

The words tangled in Ellie’s mind again. How could she possibly explain that moment? How it had come out of nowhere, how she still didn’t fully understand it, how she had somehow seen herself and Abby and Joel all at once and suddenly knew without a doubt that it was her last chance to avoid crossing a line she’d never come back from? She’d left Dina for the sole purpose of killing Abby – how could she now explain that in the end she’d decided not to?

“I just couldn’t,” she said weakly.

Ellie wasn’t sure what reaction she expected, and she couldn’t quite read the one she got. Dina stared at her for a long time without expression.

“ _Couldn’t_ as in you’re done? Or as in you’ll try again the next time there’s news of her?”

“It’s done,” said Ellie immediately, her tone resolute. “ _I’m_ done.”

Dina continued to stare. “Better late than never, I guess.” Her words were sharp, but her tone was soft. Ellie wasn’t sure if she was reading too much into it, but she thought she saw a hint of relief on Dina’s face.

“Dina,” said Ellie, feeling suddenly desperate, “I know saying I’m sorry isn’t enough. I know it’s the fucking _opposite_ of enough! I know I fucked up everything, and I don’t deserve anything from you. But I love you _so_ much – I swear to you that never stopped. I’ll do anything to make it right.”

The tears were sliding freely down Ellie’s cheeks by the end of her declaration. She wiped them away roughly and watched as Dina bit her lower lip. It took her a long time to respond.

“Ellie, I –” Dina paused, debating how much she wanted to say out loud. Her voice was strained from holding it steady. “I think I’ll probably always love you. But you did the _one_ thing I asked you not to – which should also have been the _easiest_ thing I could have asked for! I don’t know how to trust you after that.” 

“Is there a way for me to earn that back?”

Dina paused, swirling the liquid in her mug. “I don’t know,” she said finally. She closed and rubbed her eyes for a moment, and there was a deep weariness in her voice when she continued. “I’m so tired. After everything that’s happened, I just . . . I need some peace. I need something simple. And that’s not really a word that describes us.” 

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Ellie nodded quickly and dropped her eyes and steadied herself for the rejection.

“But I also don’t want you to not be in my life,” Dina continued slowly after a long silence. As Ellie looked up, Dina averted her gaze. “It’s a small town, and it’s your home too. JJ loves you, and I’m not quite ready to have you see him, but I don’t want to keep him from you forever.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

Sighing, Dina stared out the window at something far away, her irises shifting slightly as she pulled her thoughts together. It was the face she made whenever she was working out a problem. The familiarity of the image helped Ellie to feel more centered.

“It means that for now, we both just focus on ourselves,” said Dina finally. “I’m going to do what I need to do for me and JJ. And you should figure out . . . whatever it is you need to figure out for yourself. We’ll just see where things go.”

It wasn’t what Ellie had most hoped to hear, but it wasn’t a closed door either. She nodded quickly, trying not to show the relief she felt. “Okay.”

“That’s not a promise of anything,” Dina warned sharply. “Don’t wait around for me to change my mind.”

As always, Dina had seen right through her. Ellie nodded again, this time more slowly.

“I’m not saying that just for me,” she added, her voice suddenly closer to the gentle tone Ellie was more used to hearing from her. She started to reach her hand across the table toward Ellie’s, but pulled back halfway and dropped her eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on in your head, El. You were never good at telling me. But clearly JJ and I weren’t enough to get you through it.”

Ellie felt her stomach drop. “Dina, no, that’s not –”

“We both know that’s true,” Dina went on insistently. “And it’s . . . it’s okay. But if we weren’t enough then, we won’t be now. So waiting around for us isn’t going to change anything, and I want more than that for you. For both of us.”

The truth of Dina’s words held Ellie still, her body and thoughts frozen in place as she turned the words over in her head. She felt the tears again, hating that she couldn't control them anymore.

“I have to go,” Dina said after another moment, and Ellie saw her cheeks were wet now too. She stood in silence and put on her jacket, hovering a moment too long as Ellie had upon her arrival. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

And then she was gone. Ellie didn’t turn to watch her leave, but she was suddenly very aware of how loud the room had grown, how many people must now be in the pub behind her as she faced the corner wall – a seating choice she realized for the first time that Dina must have made intentionally, the only chair in the room that would have allowed Ellie not to get lost in her distraction and anxiety. 

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, staring into the bottom of her empty mug, listening to the noise of the crowd and letting her thoughts drift between aimless things.


	10. Chapter 10

**Author’s Note:** Content warning that this chapter contains vague suicidal thoughts (nothing particularly explicit). This will be the last of the brutally dark chapters before things slowly start their upward trend! In mapping the story out, I’ve separated it into five parts (all within this fic), and this is the last chapter of Part II. The next parts will carry Ellie and Dina through winter, spring, and summer.

Thanks to everyone for the reviews, thoughts, and appreciation! 

* * *

**TEN**

* * *

_I’ve been staring at this blank page for hours. It’s like I can’t even write the words anymore._

_She looked so different. Withdrawn. Sad. And it’s my fault._

_What do I do now?_

* * *

_I dreamed about Dina. She was smiling the way she used to, laughing and dancing to some song, reaching out for me._

_And then she was bleeding. Holding her stomach and calling my name. Asking me to stay with her._

_When I woke up, I tried to calm down. Counted my breaths. Did old military school exercises from the QZ. Anything to get the image out of my head. To tell myself it was just a dream._

_But then I remember the things that aren’t. The time she really did almost bleed out on the ground next to me. Because of me. The minutes or hours or days I spent holding her, watching the blood spread across her shirt, begging her to wake up. _

_All I’ve done is hurt her. I love her so much, but I couldn’t fucking let it be enough for me._

_I’m staring at my backpack. Should I just go?_

* * *

Ellie stood on the edge of the graveyard, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light. It was late enough that the moon sat nearly in the center of the sky, and although it was only half full, it illuminated the clearing well enough for her to read the names on the crosses. The giant oak tree was down to its last leaves, a dry and withered handful, all the muted hue of red beginning to rot. The chill of the breeze was sharp enough to push Ellie to zip her jacket and cross her arms, warning of colder nights drawing near.

She’d awoken in a cold sweat again, and the loneliness of the garage had suddenly become suffocating. The temptation to pack her things and run was growing stronger by the day, and tonight it had been nearly overwhelming. There was only one place she could think to go instead.

It was her first time back to the graveyard since shortly before they had moved out of town, and the place felt strange and unfamiliar. Ellie knew that Dina had always struggled to understand why she didn’t want to visit more. 

Upon learning of Jesse’s death, the town had held a ceremonial funeral, marking a spot for him even though they’d been forced to leave his body in Seattle. Dina had gone often for a while, and even once they’d moved to the farm, she would periodically make trips to town and talk of leaving flowers for Jesse and Joel. She talked about the grave site as a sort of gift, a tangible place she knew she could go to feel some connection to Jesse – a luxury she hadn’t been given when she lost her mother and sister. She always nudged Ellie to come along in that gentle way of hers, and Ellie had never been able to explain why she couldn’t. It was a beautiful way of seeing it, a perspective that deepened Ellie’s love for the person Dina was, but she had never been able to feel it in the same way. 

Being back now, Ellie felt the same discomfort she always had when Dina invited her – a sick feeling in her stomach, a sense that she didn’t belong. She felt almost like an intruder on hallowed ground, filled with a conflicting sense of guilt for being there at all and shame for having gone so long without seeing him.

But the desperation for connection had grown stronger than her urge for avoidance, and she knew that in life or death, Joel was the one person who wouldn’t turn her away after all she had done. Even if she didn’t deserve such grace. Even if the knowledge made the wound of all their lost time tear open all over again.

She made her way slowly through the grave markers, reading names as she went, hoping not to be surprised by any new ones. When she reached Joel’s, she saw it was decorated by three yellow flowers, clearly a recent addition to still be so vibrant in the cold. She wondered who had brought them – _Tommy? Maria? Dina_? – and then she wondered why she hadn’t brought anything of her own, hating herself for the oversight.

Sitting gingerly on the ground beside the flowers, she wrapped her arms around her knees and stared at his name etched into the wood. 

“Hey, Joel,” she said softly. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it sounded thunderous in her ears, crudely disruptive to the silence. “Sorry I haven’t been by in a while.”

Talking to a gravestone had always felt unnatural to her, and she faltered when thinking of how to go on. As Jesse’s was for Dina, Joel’s was the first grave she’d ever been able to return to for anyone who really mattered to her. The mother she’d never met, the best friend she’d shot and been forced to leave in a mall, the travelling companions she’d lost along the way – all were physically lost in every way the moment they were gone. 

She wondered how he would respond if he were there – probably brush off the comment like it was nothing, even if it wasn’t. He probably would have simply been happy to see her. Thinking about that was more painful than many physical blows she’d endured.

“I’ve been gone a long time,” she went on eventually. “I went to California to find her. I kept saying I was doing it to avenge you, to make her pay for what she did. It started out like that, but I don’t know anymore. I don’t think you would have wanted me to go to Santa Barbara. Or do half the shit I did in Seattle. I was so angry at you for so long because I felt like you took the meaning out of my life. Sometimes I’m still angry about that. But then you fucking die, and what do I do? I just double down on making sure my life is worthless. I go from being this neutral wasted positive to making everything around me worse. Like I probably did for you.”

The last image of his face came to her again, bloodied and hollow-eyed, and she winced and hugged her knees more tightly. She could feel the wave of emotion coming, knew she wouldn’t be able to stop once it hit.

“I think you’d be horrified if you saw me now. I don’t think you’d even recognize me. I’ve always thought all that religious stuff about the dead watching over us is bullshit, but now I really hope I’m right. I hope to hell you haven’t seen the things I’ve done.”

Ellie felt her throat tighten and her eyes burn, imagining Joel’s disappointment.

“I want to make it better,” she went on, almost pleading, “but I think it might be too late. I let Abby go – I don’t know if I should have, but I did. I’m back now, but I fucked everything up with Dina. She doesn’t want me to see JJ. Tommy hates me, and the whole town is afraid of me. You’re the only person I have left, and you’re not even fucking here.”

Ellie thought again of that night on Joel’s porch, the glimmer of hope and possibility that had come out of nowhere, never to be actualized. She imagined what life might have been if things were different – if the world weren’t fucked, if Abby didn’t exist, if she could have gone from that warm room in the snowstorm with Dina to a calm evening in Joel’s living room watching a stupid movie for the first time in years. She’d never even gotten to actually ask him to watch it. 

It was only as a distant afterthought that she noticed she was crying, that her body was shaking and she couldn’t tell if it was more from the cold or the pain. 

“I don’t know what to do with all these feelings. Sometimes I wish I was in this graveyard, too. Not because of the cure, or the fireflies, or any of that . . . I just don’t want to do this anymore.”

It was the first time she’d given voice to the thought that had been creeping around the edges of her mind for far longer than she wanted to admit. The full force of the wave finally crashed down and she let the sobs come unabated, the ache of Joel’s absence causing them to start fresh every time she thought they might slow. 

Ellie sat there until she had cried herself out a long time later, until it felt like nothing remained except the hollow numbness. With no energy left for anything else, she curled up on the ground beside the flowers, where the exhaustion finally overpowered her and she slept until the dawn.


	11. Chapter 11

* * *

**PART III: WINTER**

* * *

**ELEVEN**

_Maria’s decided my “vacation” is over. Time to take assignments again. She says I’m not allowed on patrol until I “get my head on straight.” I think she expected me to put up a fight, but honestly it’s a relief. I keep thinking about that Clicker in Utah, how badly I froze up._

_Besides, the first snow fell yesterday. I don’t think I’m ready to patrol in the snow._

_She asked me what I’d like to do instead, and I wasn’t really sure what to say. Patrol was always my thing. I hated the fucking gardens, never really tried to learn anything else._

_Sometimes I think killing might be the only thing I’m good at._

_I ended up asking for sentry, which I think surprised her again. Sentry duty is usually for younger or older people. The ones who don’t have many skills yet or who don’t have the physical ability to do the harder labor. It’s fucking boring and half the shifts are overnight. I would have hated it before. But now? I don’t really want to be around people. I don’t want to force Dina to see me every day. And I can’t sleep most nights anyway. Seems as good as anything else._

* * *

_Well, I was wrong. After a couple weeks of sentry, I can definitively say it fucking sucks._

_Of course I got stuck with most of the night shifts. So now instead of spending all my time in a garage, I spend half my time in a garage and the other half shivering all night in bone-rattling cold with one of the only two other sentries willing to do this shitty assignment – Robby, the hyperactive 13-year-old, or Jeremiah, a grumpy old-timer who’s almost as friendly as Seth._

_I didn’t think about how much time sentry would give me to stay stuck in my own head. Sometimes I can stay focused on watching the tree line. Scanning for movement. Sometimes I’m too cued in, jumping at shadows. The other night I saw something move at the edge of the clearing that I could have sworn was a person. I had my gun up and my finger on the trigger before I realized it was just chunks of snow falling off a smaller tree. It’s hard to remember that lookout here is different from the kind I’m used to. _

_If I’m not watching everything too closely, I’m replaying the same thoughts. It all feels so pointless. I don’t know why I’m here. I stare at the mountains in the distance and I want so badly to just go._

_But I haven’t seen my Potato yet. I have to at least stay long enough for that._

* * *

Winter came early and hit hard, bringing a seemingly endless train of storms with only a day or two of reprieve between them. The patrol teams couldn’t travel far, coming back looking half-frozen from the short distances they were able to secure. Knowing patrols were limited put everyone on edge, the dark days mingling with the collective knowledge that their radius of confirmed safety was growing smaller. It felt like most of Jackson had retreated to their homes, coming out only when needed for work or essentials. The Tipsy Bison was nearly empty most nights, and Main Street felt quieter than usual after a blizzard knocked down several of their street lights.

Despite the terrible weather, Ellie offered to go hunting, hoping for something to break the monotony of her days. She thought that wandering on a short leash might be enough of a sieve to drain some of her urge to run. She was surprised that Maria agreed immediately, and as Ellie thought back on it later, she realized the older woman had seemed worried. With the winter shaping up to be a bad one, they probably needed all the food they could get. Although the hunting trip had started out as a purely self-serving idea, she felt a bit more energized knowing that she was doing something that might actually help.

Her first outing was brief and not particularly successful – two rabbits, one of them very small. She contemplated pressing on, wanting to come back with something more useful, but the winds had picked up and she had accidentally wandered onto the first part of the Creek Trail. When she realized where she was after trapping the rabbits, it had taken all her energy to pull her thoughts away from the memories that lay further up that route. It was all too similar, and she decided to call it a day.

Although she’d only been out for an hour, she felt noticeably lighter as she walked back through town. There was a feeling of purpose in her step as she made her way to the butcher shop, the rabbits dangling from a rope at her side. It felt nice to be able to provide something. There weren’t many people out, and the few who were had their hoods pulled tightly around their faces, but Ellie thought they didn’t seem to be staring at her as much anymore.

The butcher shop was one of the few lively spots that afternoon, and Ellie was surprised by the frenzy of activity taking place inside – the butcher and his team hacking at huge slabs of meat, packing and sealing cuts, carrying huge bloody masses out the back door toward the meat smoker. She was reminded again of the underlying worry that always existed in the winter, the fear of starvation they all felt, seeming much more dire a threat this year.

She thought of David and a shiver ran down her spine. No matter how bad things got in Jackson, she knew they would never come close to crossing those lines. 

Distracted, she didn’t notice the man waiting outside the shop a few feet away from where she stood. He coughed and she looked at him instinctively, only then noticing the familiar tan jacket, the long hair pulled back into a ponytail, the leg held just a bit too stiffly. She felt her breath catch.

“Tommy.”

His process of recognition mirrored hers – turning calmly to look and freezing suddenly when he realized who she was. She couldn’t quite make sense of the first emotions that registered on his face. They weren’t hostile, but they also weren’t positive.

He seemed to shake the reaction quickly, offering her a forced smile. “Ellie - holy shit!”

Before she could think of how to respond, he moved forward and hugged her. Startled, she knew she was too stiff for the gesture, only halfheartedly attempting to embrace him as he was pulling away. 

“Maria said you were back,” he said. He shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry I haven’t made it up here yet. I’ve been down at the dam a lot lately, what with all the storms.”

He looked like he had aged more than he should have in the time she’d been gone. His hair had grown thin and his face seemed hollower, the lines more pronounced. For the first time, she thought he had the look of a man growing old.

“I haven’t really been out much either.” Ellie tried to return the smile. “Uh – how have you been?”

“Good, yeah,” he said a bit too quickly. “Fine. Just keeping busy.”

The forced normalcy was evident to both of them, and they faltered as the easy pleasantries came to an end. The next natural direction was for Tommy to ask Ellie the same question, and they both understood implicitly what speaking those words would mean.

The butcher broke the awkward standstill, calling out to Tommy that his meat was ready and offering to take Ellie’s kill to community food storage. As the two moved to the counter, Ellie kept her eyes focused on her rabbits, but her body was tense and she was sharply aware of Tommy’s every movement. It was the first time she’d seen him since that day at the farm, and she had no idea how to feel or what to expect.

Part of her hoped that Tommy would just leave, that her business with the butcher would take longer than usual and she would turn around and find he had gone. But it took no time at all, and as the butcher carried the rabbits away, Tommy was still nearby, clearly waiting for her.

She noticed he was staring at her hand, at the space where her missing fingers used to be. She tucked it instinctively back in her pocket, feeling embarrassed. It had healed rough and ugly, never losing its jagged edges and red tint, but it wasn’t the appearance that bothered her. Every time she looked at it, she thought back to that beach – to the person she was in that fight, someone who would threaten a child and viciously beat someone already half-dead. Even though she knew it was irrational, she felt exposed whenever people stared at the injury, as though they were seeing her for who she really was.

But there was no horror on Tommy’s face, no disgust and no anger. Just a more pronounced version of that same expression he had worn when he first saw her, which she realized suddenly was one of deep sadness.

“Ellie, listen,” said Tommy, finally breaking the silence, “I’m sorry for what I said. I shoulda been the one protecting you, and then I . . .” He broke off awkwardly, looking down and rubbing the back of his neck. “I shouldn’ta done it.”

The apology felt strange and uncomfortable to Ellie, and she responded quickly in the hopes of moving on. “It’s okay. I get it.”

He nodded roughly and shifted the package of meat in his arms. “Well . . . I’m really glad you’re all right. I probably need to get going if I want to make it back to the dam before the snow starts up again.”

“Yeah, of course. Safe travels, we’ll catch up later.”

For a few moments, Ellie thought that would be the end of it, a best case scenario for how the conversation could have gone, but after taking a few steps toward the stables Tommy paused.

“Did you do it?” he asked softly, a hint of that hard edge back in his voice. He was turned only halfway toward her, staring out toward the incoming clouds. “Is she dead?”

It was the question Ellie had dreaded answering, and even though she’d spent countless hours thinking of how to tell him, it was yet another thing she couldn’t find the words for. When she looked back on their conversation later, she wouldn’t remember making a conscious decision at all. 

“Yeah.”

He never looked directly at her. Perhaps if he had, he would have seen the instant remorse that spread across her face, but instead he just kept facing the horizon, his shoulders loosening with relief. For a moment, he closed his eyes and she thought she saw the hint of a sad smile.

“Good.”

There was nothing left to say, and without another word, Tommy turned and headed back to the horses. His pace was slow and stiff, reminding Ellie of his injury and her role in it, and she suddenly hated herself deeply for everything – for going to Seattle at all, for letting Abby go, for lying to Tommy. Part of her wanted to yell out after him, scream the truth into the wind so everyone would know, but the memory of the look of peace on his face held her still. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note:** Thank you so much for all the encouraging comments! I'm glad the story is resonating well with folks, I'm really enjoying writing it! For those hoping for more Dina and Ellie interaction, that's coming soon, I promise!

* * *

**TWELVE**

* * *

_I keep remembering that day on the ridge above Jackson. The day Joel lied._

_I think I always knew on some level. Not specifics, but even then I could tell he was hiding something. I mean, who the fuck is in such a hurry that they can’t even wait for someone to wake up and put on actual clothes?_

_You’re a shitty liar, Joel._

_But he told me what he knew I wanted to hear. And I didn’t want to think too much about it. I didn’t want to deal with what it would mean if I did._

_Did I just do the same thing to Tommy?_

_I swore after Salt Lake I would never do what Joel did. I would never lie like that. But Tommy looked so devastated. And then I was just saying it. And then it was too late. How do I take it back now without making it worse?_

* * *

_The howling of the wind sounds like someone screaming. It’s all I can think about. I hear him in that basement. I remember the way the snow felt that day. How it blew sideways and stung my face, freezing strands of my hair together._

_There was a storm like this back at the farm once. Dina held me all night and it helped._

_I haven’t seen her in weeks._

* * *

_Dear Ellie,_

_I don’t know why I keep writing these. Maybe I’m going stir crazy. Maybe I just miss talking to you, which sounds stupid now that you’re only a few streets away, but it feels like much farther. I’m still not sure that the “you” I miss talking to is the one that’s here. Even if she is, the “me” that loved her isn’t the same anymore either._

_This winter hasn’t helped. Everyone’s so on edge, and sometimes days go by where the only person I see is JJ. He’s in a wild phase, and being cooped up is making it worse. He doesn’t understand why we can’t go outside, and he’s taken to throwing some truly legendary tantrums. You’d be impressed. I can picture the look on your face. But I’m just fucking exhausted. I try to get over to Robin and Lee’s place as often as I can. It’s good for all of us, but it hasn’t been as easy to find time these days. If I’m being really honest (and why the hell not? I’m sure this letter will just get crumpled up with all the rest), I’m really fucking lonely._

_I haven’t actually seen you for quite a while now, and the last time I did I’m not even sure you knew I was there. It was barely dawn, and you were wrapped up in one of those thick blankets coming back from a sentry shift. I couldn’t believe it when Maria told me you agreed to that assignment. She says you’re doing well, though. I’m glad. I know the winter’s hard for you._

_I’m sure you think I’m avoiding you, and I probably am a little. I just don’t know how to be around you right now. Everything’s too raw, it still hurts too much. It’s confusing to care about you the way I do when I’m still so angry. But I can see you’re trying. After we talked, I braced for you to disappear again. I wasn’t sure you’d stick around if it wasn’t easy to pick up the pieces, but you did. Even though I stand by everything I said, and even though I’m sure you don’t think so, I’m glad you stayed._

_Dina_

* * *

_The storms have finally let up. It’s been almost five days now without a blizzard. I think we’re all starting to trust it might actually be done._

_Jackson is buried in snow like I’ve never seen. Huge drifts engulfing buildings. Some of them nearly reach the top of the perimeter fence. We’ve been shoveling those as fast as we can._

_Everyone’s exhausted. It feels like everything needs to be repaired. The whole town has to be dug out. I hear people chopping firewood all day and all night. A lot of us are hunting whenever we can now, but none of us are finding much. It’s a lot of rabbits and birds, sometimes a fox if we get lucky. Maria says we’re still doing okay on supplies, but the food distribution is getting lighter._

_I’ve started staying in Joel’s house. It still feels weird. I didn’t really want to, but one morning I had to tunnel my way out of the garage and it seemed stupid to tunnel back in later. I’m not using much of the house, just the kitchen, and one of the spare bedrooms and bathrooms he never did much with. I don’t want to move his things around more than I have to._

* * *

After weeks of grey skies, a day finally dawned bright and clear and the spirits of the townspeople seemed to rise alongside the sun. Despite the days of hard labor they had already endured, laughter could be heard in all corners of Jackson that morning as the work carried on. 

Ellie found herself on the outside of it all both literally and figuratively as she trudged her way slowly through the quiet forest in search of food. She had set out at dawn for the fourth day in a row, painstakingly cutting paths through the deep snow, trying to balance stealth with efficiency in a way the winter made nearly impossible. The patrol teams had begun clearing routes, and she had a pair of snow shoes to help cross the vast stretches that would have to wait for the thaw, but the process remained arduous and prey remained scarce. She knew some of the men had been having more success ice fishing out of the nearby river, and although she wanted to learn how to do it, she didn’t want to bother anyone by asking.

The weather everyone else was celebrating had Ellie in a sour mood by the time she stopped for a midmorning snack. The sunlight refracting off the crystals in the snow made the ground glitter in a way that was both beautiful and blinding, making it much harder to see details or notice movement. The temperature had crept just far enough above freezing for the snow on the branches to begin melting, dropping heavy mounds of slush onto anything below. Ellie had been hit by several already and her hair and jacket were soaked. Even more infuriating, the erratic sound and sight of the clumps falling around her kept sending her into alert, swinging her rifle up only to discover she was pointing at mist. 

She had all but given up on success for the day as she pulled some deer jerky out of her pack, feeling guilty for eating it when she wouldn’t be bringing back anything in return. Perhaps as a result of the long hours she had been putting in, her appetite had come back with a vengeance. It was no longer a chore to force herself to eat just enough to keep going, and she noticed herself feeling physically stronger.

On the flip side, her sleep had managed to get even worse. She had been stringing together sentry shifts and hunting trips back-to-back, going directly from one to the next for days on end, stopping only to sleep for a few hours in the afternoon when her mind and body were too drained to keep her awake any longer. Keeping busy helped pull her mind away from the thoughts she didn’t wish to visit, many of which felt even more present now that she was staying in Joel’s house. Every time she set foot inside, she felt a confusing mixture of longing and discomfort that she didn’t want to examine too closely.

Shaking the thoughts away, Ellie finished the jerky and shouldered her pack again, resolving to try for just a little longer. To quicken her progress, she made her way to one of the cleared patrol routes nearby and pulled her snow shoes off, wandering deeper into the forest than she had dared the last few times she’d been out. 

She followed the path all the way up to the old gas station on the ridge above town. As she vaulted herself over the rusted guardrail at the edge of the lot, she looked up and stopped still where she stood. 

Half submerged in the thinner layer of snow that blanketed the ground beneath the station’s overhang was the dismembered skeleton of some four-legged creature, skin and flesh long gone, bones scattered in pools of frozen blood. The body looked like it must have been there for at least a few days.

Listening closely for any sound that might indicate she was not alone, Ellie moved closer to largest bloodstain under the fractured ribcage. Based on its size and skull, she suspected it had been a deer, but whatever killed it had picked it clean. 

Although she knew logically she should sweep the area, the longer she stared down at the carcass, the more her mind wandered backward. She thought of the last time she had come upon a sight like this, patrolling with Dina on another winter afternoon, consumed by simple thoughts of a kiss in the last few hours before her life had been turned upside down. 

Staring deeper into the dark crimson blood that had frozen like glass, Ellie could see Joel’s face again, his vacant eyes, the light glinting off the metal of the golf club. It felt like she was as much in the basement as she was in the snow, consumed by all the same feelings of dread and helplessness.

And then it was a red, pulsating light. The cold metal in her own hand, the way it felt when it smashed against skin, against bone, until screams faded into pleas and finally into agreement. It was the smallest squeeze of a finger on a trigger, the thunderous explosion of a gunshot, the creeping swirl of blood into water on a concrete floor and the vacant eyes of an unarmed mother carrying a child that would never know the world. It was the names – _Nora, Owen, and Mel_ – she had once not given a single fuck about, and now suspected she would never forget. The emotions that washed over her were similar to the ones that gripped her whenever she pictured the basement, chilling and sickening and capable of seizing her whole body, but they were also decidedly different – these fueled by a powerful sense disgust and self-loathing.

When she was finally able to focus again on the world around her, she found she had fallen to her hands and knees amidst the scattered bones. No energy left, she pushed herself backward just far enough to reach one of the station’s support pillars, leaning against it as she shivered and tried to steady herself.

Ellie stared down at her hands as her breathing slowly evened, disgusted by the look of them. A hot anger flooded her as quickly as the memories had, consuming her every bit as thoroughly. She hated that these moments were still happening, that they could still bring her to her knees out of nowhere, that even after so much time had passed she still could not move on.

Looking up at the deer carcass again, she felt enraged at the sight of it – that the first real source of meat she’d found after weeks of their brutal winter was already stripped clean by whatever had gotten there first, that she would go home empty-handed. 

Before she knew what she was doing, she had pushed herself to her feet and begun kicking viciously at the bones, sending them clattering against ice and metal, her reservoir of anger only growing deeper as she acted on it. Pulling her machete from her pack, she began hacking at a nearby tree trunk over and over, screaming each time it made contact with the wood. She knew how much noise she was making and hoped it would attract every infected within earshot so she could turn her fury onto them instead – the perfect target, the only enemy you could kill without a shred of doubt or consequence.

But no infected came. No animals emerged, no patrol teams arrived to check on the disturbance. Ellie cut pointlessly at the tree until it was covered in deep gashes and her arms felt like rubber, finally letting them drop to her sides as the last of the heat faded and she was left empty.

* * *

It was midafternoon before Ellie could summon enough energy to get herself back to Jackson. Her feet were dragging as she passed through the front gates and for once she couldn’t wait to reach her bed. She stared absentmindedly toward town as the gate operator signed her back in, and she was paying so little attention it took her several seconds long than it should have to recognize Dina.

The dark-haired woman stood outside the blue medical building on the other side of the stables, leaning against the wall and laughing as she talked with someone Ellie didn’t recognize. Even from a distance, Ellie could see how happy Dina looked, and it made her realize with a jolt how long it had been since she’d seen her smile that way. 

Ellie had heard about Dina’s switch to Medic. It wasn’t an easy assignment to get – the limited spots were coveted by many, and it required a commitment to a lengthy training. Although she’d never talked about having an interest in medicine, Ellie knew how tired Dina was of all the violence that marked so much of their lives, how eager she’d been to leave it behind after Seattle. It was part of what drew her to the farm, and was yet another thing Ellie felt deeply responsible for ruining. 

Dina appeared to be in a good mood, and plenty of time had passed since their conversation at the pub. Ellie felt her heartrate surge as she considered going over and saying hi. _She_ did _say she didn’t want to avoid me forever . . ._

She was still debating when her attention was drawn to Dina’s conversation partner for the first time. Looking at him more closely, Ellie realized she actually had seen him around a few times, although they had never spoken. He and his brother had turned up days before the snow began to fall, the last refugees they’d taken in for the year. She thought his name might be Charles, or Charlie, or something similar, but she had never cared enough to learn - until that moment. 

Her anxious hope plummeted as she watched him playfully knock a clump of snow off the roof onto Dina’s head, saw the way she laughed, noticed how she hadn’t taken her eyes off him the whole time Ellie had been staring. For the first time, she became sharply aware of how tall and lean he was, the easy smile he always wore, his clear interest in Dina’s company. And her clear interest in his.

Before she had time to process the thought, a flash of orange darted around the side of the building and clamped onto Dina’s leg, and Ellie felt her heart both soar and break in the exact same moment. JJ was not only standing, but running now. He wore the brightest jacket Ellie had ever seen, and his hair had grown long and shaggy like Jesse’s. As he gripped Dina’s leg, Ellie saw that his giant smile hadn’t changed at all, and she felt tears sting at her eyes as she remembered all the hours she’d spent holding him, finding comfort in his joy when she couldn’t anywhere else. Dina reached down and picked up him, both of them laughing as she swung him in a circle, and his mouth began moving rapidly. Of course he would be able to talk now, Ellie realized. 

To cement the agony of the whole picture, she watched Dina’s new suitor hold a hand out toward JJ, and JJ immediately return a high-five. In that instant, a devastating understanding dawned on Ellie as she stood watching the picture of what could be a happy family, what actually _had_ been hers until she had walked away from it. She grew still as she felt the resignation set in.

Before Dina could notice her, Ellie pulled her hood up and turned sharply down the side streets that would take her the long way back to Joel’s house. 

* * *

_They’re better off without me. I should have known they would be. I shouldn’t have come back._

_I tried, but I can’t do this anymore._


	13. Chapter 13

**THIRTEEN**

* * *

The next morning, Ellie slipped out in plain sight under the guise of another hunting trip. People were used to her solo expeditions, and it was common to take heavy packs out in the winter months. No one thought to question her intent, to wonder if she intended to come back. Knowing Maria would have been the only person not so easily fooled, Ellie waited until the woman was busy helping with fence repairs on the far side of town and walked right through the front gates.

When she reached the ridge, she finally allowed herself to stop and look back. The frenzy of work and life carried on, but she couldn’t see it from there. She hadn’t allowed herself to think too much as she passed the familiar buildings and faces for what she imagined would be the last time. There was no point in getting nostalgic or having doubts. She had done her best to go back to the version of herself that had been content in Jackson, to stave off the urge to run, to settle and atone and accept that there was no great purpose or meaning in her existence. And she had failed. 

Despite her resolve, she felt a sense of attachment as she stared down at the quiet settlement. It was rare to find a place where the people within the walls weren’t as likely to kill you as the ones outside. She pictured Dina and JJ as they had looked laughing in the sun, and she felt at ease knowing they had found such a place, that JJ could grow up having memories like that.

But in that moment the day before, watching them blend so seamlessly into such a uniquely peaceful community, Ellie had understood clearly that she was now too much like the rest of the world to fit into a place like Jackson any longer. She would only stain everything else if she kept trying to force herself into the idyllic picture, including the two people she loved most. 

She had stayed up part of the night writing notes to each of them – a lengthy explanation and apology to Dina, and a heartfelt message of love and encouragement to JJ. She tucked them out of the way in Joel’s house, not so hidden they would never be discovered, but not so obvious that the first person to come looking for her would find them immediately. Ellie wanted to be sure she had enough time to disappear cleanly and completely. 

Turning away from the image of the little town in the valley below, she crossed the gas station parking lot without looking too closely at the deer carcass that had crippled her the day before and saw that the cleared route ended at the far side of the pavement. She pulled on her snowshoes, ashamed for taking supplies she would not be returning. She had tried to limit it as much as possible; she had her own weapons, and she’d been storing a lot of the food rations she hadn’t had an appetite for in the previous weeks, so she hadn’t needed much. Just a bit of ammo, the snowshoes, and the small tin sled and shovel she dragged behind her. It would be painfully slow going in the winter without a horse, but she couldn’t bring herself to run off with one of those, too. Maria would be furious enough already.

She had started to write a letter to Maria as well, but she’d abandoned the attempt after a few sentences. The woman was too practical to care about anything Ellie could say, had told her clearly she could stay or go, and she’d made her choice. Ellie had also debated writing something to Tommy, weighed the value of coming clean or leaving things as they were. Ultimately, she decided nothing good would come from telling him the truth in a letter and leaving him to deal with it. That guilt was hers to carry now. 

And then there was Joel. The grave she’d known she should visit one last time, yet still hadn’t been able to. She knew he would be disappointed in her choice to leave - but she also knew that he would be disappointed in almost everything she’d done since he died. It was a fact she was learning to live with. 

Looking out across the sea of white, the reality of what she was doing began to sink in. The day was already nearing noon, and winter darkness fell early. She didn’t have much of a plan – when she had contemplated where to go, there had been no immediate answer. She didn’t have people waiting for her anywhere, and most of the places she’d passed through before she would just as soon never see again. All she knew was that she had about three days’ worth of food in her pack before she would need to begin relying on finding enough prey to keep her fed, and she would only be able to cover a fraction of the distance she could normally in that time.

She decided heading south was the only thing that made sense. With any luck, she could escape winter early. The farmhouse also lay in that direction, normally a half day’s ride from town, and she figured she could reach it by the next day in the current conditions. She would hole up there for a bit and map out a better route.

The downside to her plan was that she had a long night ahead of her, with nowhere to sleep but the frozen forest. As long as the weather held up, she would survive. The bigger concern was knowing that no one had patrolled past where she stood in weeks, and she had no idea how many infected might be roaming around, just as hungry as she was. She pulled the shotgun off her pack and made sure it was loaded, tucking it under her arm as she got her balance on the snowshoes.

“All right,” she said to herself grimly. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

Winter had never been kind to Ellie, and it didn’t seem prepared to change its ways. Progress was slower than she anticipated, and before she knew it, the sun had set and the wind had picked up, driving her to seek shelter for the night. After wandering at a snail’s pace for an hour by the dim glow of her flashlight, she found a tree with branches bent all the way down to the snow’s surface, creating a pocket of space somewhat hidden behind the boughs. It was likely the best she’d be able to do.

Nibbling on half-frozen jerky and hard bread, Ellie threw her wool blanket out over the sled and laid down on top of it, still shivering from the cold. There was no actual warmth to be found, only the barest amount of insulation needed to keep her alive until the sun rose. It would be a miserable night. 

She tried to figure out how far she’d come, but with the normal path obscured it was impossible to tell. She hadn’t reached any of the viewpoints that looked down on the valley floor yet, which meant she was still deep in the mountains. There was a still a long way to go

Pushing aside the voice in her head that kept trying to tell her what an idiot she was, she drifted into a light and uneasy sleep. She never dropped deep enough into slumber to feel fully unconscious, so when the first scream pierced the night, she didn’t know at first whether or not it had been a dream. For several long seconds, she heard nothing but the whining of the wind, and she wondered if it had just been another memory.

Then it came again, clear and sharp and unmistakably human. Heart thundering, Ellie bolted upright and grabbed the shotgun. Pushing herself up into a crouch on the sled, she closed her eyes and tried to focus in on the source of the sound. The wind made it difficult to tell which direction it was coming from, but it was clearly far enough away to not pose an immediate risk to her. The night was black and moonless, and it was not unreasonable at all to hope that if she just stayed still and silent, whatever threat was out there might pass her by entirely.

But the screams persisted, and she thought she heard someone yell “ _Please_!” Gunshots echoed and a scream cut off sharply. Ellie’s mind began to race, wondering who would be out so late. Hunters, maybe – or someone else from Jackson who lost their way, a patrol team that couldn’t make it home. In another life, it could have been her or Dina.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ellie muttered, collecting her things hastily and throwing her pack on. She would check it out from a distance, see if it was anything worth involving herself in or if she was better off staying hidden. 

She crept as quietly as she could through the trees, doing her best to follow the floating sounds of skirmish. As she grew closer, she started to pick out more specific noises: yelling, gunshots of different pitches, and the blood-curdling shrieks of the infected.

The conditions were terrible for fighting. She couldn’t move quickly or stealthily in snowshoes, but without them every step held the risk of breaking through a less-packed surface and trapping her legs deep in the snow. If there were more than a few enemies, open battle would be as good as suicide.

Reaching the top of a steep slope, she stopped just in time to avoid rolling downhill face first. Crouching and turning off her flashlight, she could finally see her goal – beams of light waving wildly in the trees at the bottom of the hill. It was next to impossible to pick out more detail than that, but she counted at least three lights, and she could clearly hear the sound of clickers mingled with the screams of humans. The people didn’t seem organized or trained, and Ellie didn’t imagine they would last much longer without help.

Grabbing her bow, she laid down on top of the snow and tried to use the sight to get a better look at the distant shapes, but it was still too dark. She didn’t love the idea of getting any closer – getting back up that hill in an emergency would be a problem – but she wouldn’t be able to pick them off from there without a clearer visual.

She had hoped she would be able to kill them silently at range, leaving her the option to fade away into the forest before anyone knew she was there, but it seemed a more obvious approach would be needed. Rummaging in her pack, she pulled out supplies to craft a Molotov. It was the only one she would be able to make with what she carried, and she would be tossing it into the dark and hoping for the best.

Winding her arm back, she threw it with as much force as she could toward a spot with fewer flashlights. As she waited breathlessly for it to land, she picked her bow back up and drew it, focusing once more through the sight. Moments later, the forest erupted with orange light as the Molotov hit the base of a tree and exploded. 

As Ellie had banked on, the ungodly shrieks grew louder, and she saw misshapen silhouettes appearing amidst the flames. One by one, she released the arrows she carried at the shapes, watching as they dropped. When she released her last arrow, she grabbed quickly for her hunting rifle and used the last light of the dying fire to scan the area with the more powerful scope. She couldn’t make out much, but she saw at least one body still moving, and she could still hear clicks and shrieks. The flashlights had disappeared, and Ellie hoped to hell they’d taken advantage of the distraction to run.

All of her safe and silent options gone, Ellie debated the next move. If she fired the rifle, everything in the area would know her position. If she made her way down the slope and attempted a sneak attack, she left herself open to a possible ambush by enemies she hadn’t seen. She still had no idea who these people were, if they would thank her or turn on her the second the infected were dealt with. As she had learned too many times, alliances of desperation only went so far.

The memory of fighting alongside David in the old factory was nearly enough to make her call it quits right then. She had evened the odds for them; if these people couldn’t take down one clicker, they weren’t going to make it much farther anyway. But fate seemed to have a plan of its own that night, for just as her self-preservation instinct was taking over, Ellie heard a child scream at the top of their lungs, “ _Daddy!”_

The clicker shrieked, and Ellie knew she had seconds to make a choice. She placed the sled on the edge of the hill, turned her light back on, and pushed herself forward. The sled picked up speed quickly, bumping roughly over icy mounds and divots, narrowly missing the trunk of a large tree as it sailed onto the more even terrain at the bottom of the incline. As it slowed, she saw she was only yards away from the clicker, now illuminated by someone else’s flashlight as it ran toward the sound of the crying child. A gun went off, but the clicker kept advancing.

Knowing she had only seconds, she grabbed her hunting rifle, steadied it on the clicker’s head, fired – and missed. Attempting to fire again, she heard nothing but the hollow _click_ of an empty chamber.

The clicker froze where it stood, its head swiveling, and then turned and began advancing toward Ellie.

“That’s right, come here, motherfucker!” Ellie taunted, tossing her rifle aside and grabbing for her shotgun. 

But the clicker moved faster than she anticipated, and she had just gotten her hands on the shotgun when it was on her, knocking her backward. It slashed at her viciously as she held it at bay, pushing her deeper into the snow with each lunge. It took all her strength to keep its mouth from her throat. After several long moments of struggle, it reared back, preparing push down on her again. Ellie saw her opening and took it, swinging the butt of the shotgun upward and bashing it in the face. As it reeled, she was able to lay back, point the gun into its chest, and pull the trigger.

Its dying wail broke the night as the close-range blast tore it nearly in two. She felt hot blood on her face and hands as its body fell down on top of her. Ellie didn’t move for several moments, listening carefully for any remaining infected, but everything had grown quiet except for the child’s cries. 

She shoved the clicker away, an involuntary shudder passing through her as she touched it. Pushing herself back to her feet, she initially saw nothing but darkness. In the clearing ahead, a single beam of light continued to shine steadily across the ground – a flashlight that must have been dropped and left behind. Ellie couldn’t see any people from where she stood. Just as she started to wonder with a sinking stomach if the child was the only one left alive, a man’s voice called out, “Alex!” A second light flicked on, and footsteps crunched across snow.

Wondering briefly if the wisest choice was still to try to disappear before anyone approached her, Ellie shook it off. It was too late for a stealthy retreat now. Keeping her light on and her shotgun close, she walked slowly toward the voices.

Her light finally illuminated the people she had been hearing: a blonde man kneeling next to a little boy, trying to comfort him. Ellie was about to call out to them when she heard the sound of a gun being cocked.

“Don’t move another step.”

The voice came from behind her, and Ellie swore silently at her own idiocy. She had known better, and still she’d let herself be taken by surprise.

“Put the gun on the ground.”

She debated a fake-out, pictured spinning to shoot whoever was there before they could shoot her, but the man and the boy were still within an easy shot of her from the other direction. For now, following orders seemed the only option. She set the gun on the snow and held her hands up.

“Okay,” she said steadily.

“The bag, too. On the ground.”

_Fuck_. She obeyed again, laying her pack down as instructed, keeping it just close enough that she could still reach it if she had to make a move.

“Who the hell are you?” It was a woman’s voice, gravelly and older.

Ellie couldn’t help herself. “The person who just saved your goddamn lives.”

“I could shoot you right now, girl,” the older woman fired back. “Where are the rest of your people?”

Ellie forced herself to stay calm. “It’s just me.”

“Bullshit.”

“Ma!”

The voice made Ellie jump. She saw the man in front of her was watching the two of them intently, holding the crying boy close to his chest. He had a pistol holstered at his hip, but he made no move for it. Getting a good look at his face for the first time, she saw that he appeared to be at least a decade older than her, but still younger than Joel or Tommy. His face was covered in stubble caked with ice, and the tip of his nose was dark with frostbite.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. “Where are Shawn and Amber? We need to find them.”

The voice behind Ellie didn’t answer, and the silence that fell was heavy.

The boy reached up and tugged at the man’s shirt sleeve, pointing toward the fallen flashlight. “D-Daddy . . .” he whispered.

“It’s okay, bud,” the man consoled immediately, “we’ll find him.”

“He’s gone, Ben,” the woman’s voice announced sharply, with the rough edge of someone choking off emotion. “They got him.”

The man, Ben, seemed stunned by this, but the boy didn’t react at all. He clung to his knees and continued rocking in the snow.

“Are . . . are you sure? You couldn’t have seen –”

“I saw enough. He didn’t make it, hon.”

Despite knowing she was still held at gunpoint, Ellie felt the sting of watching these strangers process their loss. The pain on their faces was raw and familiar.

After a long moment, Ben took the boy’s hand and stood up. “We need to look for Amber. Can you help me find your sister, bud?” The boy nodded slowly, but it was hard to tell if he processed the words.

“I can help,” Ellie offered sincerely, locking eyes with Ben. “You can keep my weapons. If I wanted to hurt you, why would I have killed those infected?”

“Easy way to seem like an ally and then kill and rob us when we turn our backs,” the old woman barked.

“I could have just let them kill you, wiped them out like I did, and then taken whatever I wanted,” Ellie pointed out. 

Ben studied her quietly and finally nodded. “We don’t have time for this, Ma. You – shake yourself down. Prove you don’t have anything else on you.”

The old woman said nothing. Ellie did as he asked, but pushed her knife up her sleeve where it wouldn’t be seen.

Turning to the boy again, Ben spoke gently. “Alex, you’re going to wait here with Grandma, okay? I’ll be back in no time.” 

There had been no formal declaration that she was free to move, but as he led the boy past where Ellie stood, she turned very slowly to get a look at the woman. Although she had anticipated someone who looked like a grandmother, she was stunned to see perhaps the oldest person she had ever laid eyes on – not just _old_ by the standards of their world, but _ancient_. She stood a few inches shorter than Ellie, her back slightly hunched, her skin wrinkled and leathery. Her hands drew almost as much attention as Ellie knew her own did, some of her fingers stiff and set at weird angles, her whole arm shaking from holding her gun steady. She squinted in a way Ellie initially took for a glare, but came to realize was actually just a mark of weak sight. That the woman had survived a clicker attack in sub-freezing temperatures was a miracle unto itself.

The old woman reluctantly lowered the gun as the little boy reached her, pulling him close even as her eyes did not stop tracing Ellie’s movements.

Ben looked at Ellie cautiously. “Amber’s his sister,” he said shortly. “They’re twins. She’s gotta be out here somewhere.”

Ellie nodded, and both set out in different directions to scour the dark woods, calling the girl’s name. As the minutes dragged on without success, Ellie couldn’t shake the feeling that she already knew what they would find. 

She had wandered so far away from where the boy and the old woman stood that she was about to turn back when she saw the blood, bright red and splattered widely across the snow. Scanning the area slowly, she traced it to its sources – a clicker with half its head blown off, and the body of a middle-aged man with deep scratches down half his face and gaping wounds on his throat and abdomen.

Despite Shawn’s unfortunate end, Ellie couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief that she wasn’t looking at the corpse of a child. There were no blood trails leading beyond the grisly scene, no other bodies nearby. As she stood contemplating where to look next, Ben’s voice still calling out in the distance, she heard soft movement to her right and spun instinctively.

Illuminated there at the edge of the beam of her light was a tiny figure huddled in the narrow gap between two trees, staring silently at the scene Ellie had just discovered. The dark shape of a gun lay in the snow several feet away.

All at once, Ellie understood. Looking back at the bodies, she could see the clicker’s head wound would have killed it instantly; and with the shape Shawn was in, he had likely died long before the clicker was done with him. Amber must have killed the clicker as it set upon her father’s body.

Ellie called out to Ben and approached the girl slowly. She stopped a few feet away and knelt down to her level, but Amber continued to stare right through her toward the scene beyond. The girl seemed barely aware of Ellie’s presence.

“Hey, Amber,” she said softly. “I’m Ellie. It’s gonna be okay.”

Even as she said the words, Ellie heard how hollow they were and immediately regretted them. She knew all too well that an experience like this would never be okay.

Before she could think of anything else, Ben was there, pulling Amber into a tight hug, looking her over and asking if she was hurt. Ellie could see he was fighting tears. The image stung in a way she didn’t want to think about and she turned away, picking up the fallen gun and carrying it back to where the old woman and the boy still stood.

“She’s alive,” Ellie announced briefly as she returned. Showing emotion for the first time, the woman placed a hand on her heart and seemed to deflate. Ellie held the pistol out to her. “Here. She had this.”

The woman squinted again, and Ellie realized just how poor her vision must be. 

“What are you doing out here?” asked Ellie, slightly incredulous. “Shitty time to go for a walk.”

Running her hand absentmindedly through the boy’s hair where he still stood leaning against her, she stared off into the darkness. “I could ask you the same question,” she returned, but there was less venom in her voice than there had been before.

Despite the woman’s clear frailty, she was fierce, and Ellie couldn’t help but respect her for it. She thought about answering, offering something in the hopes of reciprocity, but as she considered how to explain herself she realized she didn’t know how. What could she say? That she was wandering without aim? Running away from everything she’d screwed up? 

They lapsed into silence until Ben came back, carrying Amber. The girl clung to his neck, her eyes still fixed on something none of the rest of them could see. 

“Thank you,” he said to Ellie, and she could hear in his voice how deeply he meant it. “You really did save our lives.”

Uncomfortable, Ellie shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Like you heard, I’m Ben. That’s my mother, Agnes. And my niece and nephew.” 

“Ellie.”

“Well, Ellie . . . I can’t thank you enough.” He looked around at his family, all of them silent, each trapped in their own horrors. The man looked like he was inches from breaking apart himself, like it was taking every ounce of energy he had left not to crumble. “We’re trying to get to a town called Jackson. Do you know where that is?”

Although Ellie no longer felt threatened by the group, she couldn’t help the hesitation that surged upon hearing the question. “Why?”

“We’ve heard it’s safe there. We came down from Missoula.” He hesitated. “It used to be safe there, too, but . . . not anymore.”

“Yeah,” said Ellie finally. “I’m from Jackson. It’s not far from here.”

Ben closed his eyes and nodded to himself. “That’s the news we needed right now,” he said softly. “How much farther?”

“It’s a straight shot that way.” Ellie pointed back up the hill. “Keep going until you reach the ridgeline, you’ll see it from there. You could probably make it by sunset tomorrow.”

At this, the little boy began to cry. “I can’t,” he whined toward no one in particular, locking himself more firmly onto his grandmother’s leg.

Ben looked unconvinced, watching as Agnes stood comforting the boy. He took a small step back from them to be closer to Ellie and lowered his voice. “Look, if it was just me, I’m sure I could. But Ma can barely see, and she has arthritis. It took my brother and I both practically carrying her to get this far. Without him . . .” His voice broke slightly and he shook his head. “I really hate to ask, but . . . would you be willing to give us your sled? We don’t have much, but I’ll trade you anything I can.”

Ellie stared at the broken group of travelers – the devastated man in front of her who could have killed her and taken all her supplies to save his family, but instead chose to ask; the shell-shocked kids, barely taller than the snow was deep, who had just lost their father; the grizzled old woman whose body was failing her, who had just seen her son ripped apart by clickers. The decision was easy.

“I can take you there.”

* * *

**Author's Note:** Thank you so much to everyone for the encouraging comments! I'm really glad you're enjoying! For those waiting for more interaction between Ellie and other central characters, we're almost there - this is roughly the midway point, and soon the development of those relationships will become very central. 


	14. Chapter 14

**FOURTEEN**

* * *

At Ellie’s urging, the group waited out the last hours of the night until the sky began to brighten. The last thing they needed was to be ambushed in the dark. The time dragged on forever, Ben and Agnes trying to encourage the kids to sleep without success, each randomly falling silent and staring into the distance when their thoughts became too much. Ellie didn’t bother trying to rest at all, leaving the family to their grief and quietly posting up at a nearby tree to keep watch.

They set out as soon as they could see beyond the beams of their lights, and their pace was every bit as slow as Ben had warned it would be. It took them nearly an hour just to climb back up the hill, she and Ben half-carrying Agnes through the deep snow, Ben going back each time they paused to carry the kids up the incline when they stopped moving. 

As they inched through the forest, Ben seemed determined to keep conversation going even if he was the only one engaging. He talked first about the stories they’d heard of Jackson, trying to stoke some small light in the kids to no avail. Alex kept crying randomly, and Amber still hadn’t said a single word. Ellie gave him credit for trying – he kept at it well past the point where most would have given up, and she could see the effort it cost him each time he turned away and the haunted look crept back into his eyes.

Agnes remained stoic as ever. Once they’d crested the hill, Ben had insisted she lay on the sled and allow them to pull her. The old woman was clearly prideful and seemed to resent how much work it took everyone else to keep her with them, but she went along with it silently. Ellie noticed that Agnes never seemed to stop watching her, one hand always close to the gun at her hip.

Eventually, Ben’s stories drifted toward Missoula. He told Ellie all about the little town that sounded very much like Jackson – a small community that started on its own, untouched by FEDRA or other militias, made up mostly of the rural families in the area that had lived there all their lives. Apparently, it had existed almost since the beginning of the outbreak, surviving by keeping a low profile, remaining scattered across different homesteads instead of centralized in one noticeable compound. 

He explained the winter had hit them hard too, starting almost a month sooner than it had in Jackson and coming after an already poor year for food harvesting. As their supplies ran low, fights began to break out. The homesteads began to turn against each other, and some of the men began talking about going on raids of nearby settlements. People started coming back from hunting trips with more supplies than they would have found on a normal route. And then the people who spoke out against them began to disappear.

“Leaving was our best chance to stay alive without becoming the thing we always tried not to be,” said Ben quietly, looking back at the two kids struggling their way along in snowshoes far too big for them. “We didn’t want them to grow up like that. But after everything . . . I wonder if we made the right choice.”

Ellie hadn’t bothered to say much. She walked at the front, holding her shotgun and scanning the forest for movement. But as Ben’s story came to an end, she paused and looked at him.

“Sometimes there isn’t a right choice,” she offered. He nodded and grew quiet.

She was beginning to worry they wouldn’t make it by nightfall when she heard the distant sound of horses, and soon three riders appeared on the trail ahead. As Agnes and Ben grabbed for weapons, Ellie told them to stand down. She could recognize a patrol team even from a distance.

“Ellie!” the patrol lead yelled upon seeing her. As he grew closer, she recognized it was Greg - she didn’t know him well, but they had ridden together a few times before Seattle. He pulled the horses to a stop in front of the group. “Fucking hell, we’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

Ellie was startled. “Why?”

“You never came back from hunting yesterday,” he said as though it should have been obvious – which, she realized in that moment, it should have. They wouldn’t have known she left on purpose, and protocol was to send out search teams if someone didn’t return when they were supposed to. Picturing people risking their own lives looking for her when she hadn’t wanted to be found made her flush with guilt. 

“I’m okay,” she said quickly. “These people need some help, though. They’ve been out here a long time.”

Greg nodded and the team shifted their attention to the family. For a few minutes, it was a frenzy of activity as the patrol team evaluated the newcomers and loaded their packs onto the horses. Ellie stepped back, feeling suddenly in the way.

“We can’t quite fit all of you on three horses,” Greg announced after a few minutes. “I can take a few and come back, or you can all wait here and we can bring back a fourth.”

“Take them,” Ellie said immediately. “I can walk the rest, it’s not far.” Ben seemed ready to argue, but Ellie cut him off. “I’m the only one who knows the way, and there’s no sense in waiting.”

He grudgingly agreed, and soon the four of them had joined the patrol team on their mounts. Greg looked down at her and nodded. “We’ll see you back there.”

Ellie watched them until they faded from sight, leaving her alone once more in the quiet forest as another dusk began to fall. The solitude felt deeper now, more pronounced in the absence of so much company. 

She sat for a moment in the dusty pink light of sunset, contemplating her choices. She had walked this trail yesterday with the intention of never seeing it again, only to end up right back where she started a day later. In reality, nothing had changed – she’d taken a brief detour, done something selfless for once, and she was now free to continue on her journey as she chose. She realized now that she would be missed sooner rather than later, but she could leave a note here for when the patrol team came back. They wouldn’t keep looking if they knew she didn’t want to be found.

But the idea of setting out again felt suddenly less appealing. She stared back at their footprints, imagined retracing them yet again. The thought exhausted her. It was partly logistical – she had already been freezing her ass off in the snow for over a day, she hadn’t slept, and she was running low on food. No part of her liked the thought of another frigid, sleepless night under a tree. 

More than that, though, she realized the end goal now felt muddier. Hearing Ben talk about Missoula reminded her how quickly good things faded in their world, how fragile any hard-won peace could be. She had been gone one day, and already she had been forced to fight for her life. Already, she had witnessed more death, watched kids lose their childhood in an instant because of a single wrong move.

She thought about Seattle, its brutal turf war between a bloodthirsty militia and a psychotic cult. Santa Barbara, with its slavers. Vegas, a seething mass of infected trapped behind walls. Boston, with its ration cards and government-sanctioned tyranny. Pittsburgh and Colorado and Salt Lake City and every tiny godforsaken place she had wandered through since leaving the QZ, every single one of them broken in one way or another, some better and some worse, but none _good_. None _safe_ , or _happy_. Except – sometimes – the one place she was trying to run away from.

As dusty pink gave way to indigo and stars, Ellie started back down the trail toward Jackson.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Shorter chapter this time around, but this is a turning point in the bigger story! The next chapter will be all about Ellie and Dina. As a heads up, life is going to be really busy for me the next few weeks, but I am still aiming to keep a weekly update schedule. It may be a little less consistent than it has been, but I have no intention of abandoning this story. HUGE thank you to everyone who has read and left comments - it means a great deal to me that others are enjoying this, it's been fun to write. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Author’s Note:** I’m alive! So sorry for the prolonged absence, work has been even worse than I expected these last few weeks and really left no time for writing. But I’m through the worst of it now, I have some time off, and I am back with another chapter! Even better, it’s basically just one long conversation between Ellie and Dina, so hopefully it’s worth the wait. I don’t plan for this to become a habit, and there is still more story to tell. Thank you to everyone who continues to read and leave comments - I appreciate you all!

* * *

**FIFTEEN**

* * *

Night had fully fallen by the time Ellie reached town. The sentries were expecting her, and they had already pulled the gate open before she could announce herself. She looked up at the tower to see who was working and saw old Jeremiah staring down at her. He gave her a single nod and a half-hearted salute.

Maria was waiting for her in the gatehouse. The two of them stared at each other silently.

“You had us concerned,” Maria said finally. There was a guardedness to her expression that told Ellie she suspected the real story.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry anyone.”

The silence stretched on, Maria seeming to consider whether or not she wanted to ask the question that hung between them.

“Well, you’re back. That’s all that matters.”

Ellie released the breath she was holding. “It won’t happen again.”

“I hope not.”

Unsure what else to say, Ellie looked at the ground and changed the subject. “Do you know where those refugees ended up?”

“Over with the medics, last I heard. I imagine they’ll be getting patched up for a while.” Maria gave Ellie a slight smile. “That man was singing your praises. Kept saying you saved all their lives.”

Ellie immediately shook her head. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”

“Not the way he tells it.”

Increasingly uncomfortable, Ellie looked toward the infirmary where it stood lit up brightly in the darkness. “I’m just going to go check on them.”

Ellie began walking away without waiting for a response, but Maria called out to her. When she looked back, she saw the woman’s face had softened.

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

Unsure what to do with the feelings the sentiment evoked, Ellie mumbled her thanks and continued walking. She was disoriented by how seriously everyone had reacted to her disappearance. She wasn’t sure what surprised her more: that people had noticed so quickly, that they had cared enough to mount a search, or that she had completely failed to consider the possibility that they would. Trying to make sense of everything was made harder by the weeks of poor sleep that were finally catching up to her, making her feet drag and her thoughts fuzzy.

When she reached the infirmary and pushed the door open, she was immediately blinded by the glare of the bright, sterile lights. She was still getting her bearings when she heard a familiar voice.

“Ellie!”

Dina was sitting across the room at the triage desk, and Ellie froze at the sight of her. The passing thought that she might run into Dina had crossed her mind, but she hadn’t expected the two of them to be alone in the dilapidated waiting room the instant she walked in, and she wasn’t sure what to do now that they were. The two stared at each other, and as Ellie scrambled silently for what to say, Dina stood up, crossed the room, and pulled her into a tight embrace.

It was the sort of hug the two would have shared before everything fell apart, unrestrained and filled with emotion, and Ellie felt herself melt into it more easily than she wanted to. She had wished for a moment like this for far too long, and as she felt the familiar curves of Dina’s body, she finally felt like she was home.

When Dina pulled back, Ellie tried quickly to regain control of herself and squash the disappointment that crept in. She could see the depth of the relief on Dina’s face.

“I thought . . .” Dina shook her head, working to regain her composure. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

And just like that, Ellie felt like the biggest asshole in the world. When she had pictured leaving, she imagined Dina would be the first person to assume the truth, to expect that Ellie had left them again and move right into justifiable anger. But the last time she left, she had at least _told_ Dina. As she thought about it now, she realized what must have really happened – Dina received word that Ellie didn’t make it back from a solo hunting trip in the worst winter they’d ever had, she’d watched patrol teams search for hours without success, and she had undoubtedly jumped to a worst-case scenario.

“I’m okay,” she said, the words acting as a covert apology as she forced a smile.

The look on Dina’s face betrayed how shaken she was, but when she spoke again, her voice was all business. “Well, we should get you checked out anyway.”

“Really, I’m fine.”

“Excuse me. _I’m_ the medic here.”

“Pretty sure you’re a trainee,” Ellie teased reflexively. “But okay.”

“Yeah, so you’re already getting the shittiest care available. Maybe don’t piss me off on top of that.”

Ellie held her hands up in mock surrender, and the two shared a brief smile at the ease of the banter. But as Ellie reveled in another jolt of affection, the awkwardness of the situation seemed to set in for Dina. Her smile faded and she took a small step backward.

Dina led Ellie into the back of the office, both women silent as they walked through the narrow, winding hallway. Ellie felt herself growing anxious again, crashing after the brief emotional high of their almost-normal interaction. The memory of the joy felt tainted by its source, by understanding that if Dina knew the truth, her reaction would have been quite different. The atmosphere of the old doctor’s office did nothing to quell her growing unease. Ever since her first solo trip back to St. Mary’s, she had found that medical facilities had a particular way of dampening her spirits. 

When they reached a cramped exam room at the end of the hall, Dina had Ellie sit as she began collecting supplies. The room was as artificially bright as everything else, the fluorescent lights flickering almost imperceptibly and emitting an endless hum. Ellie felt a headache coming on.

“How’s that family doing?” she asked finally.

“They’ll be okay. Just some frostbite and minor injuries,” said Dina, rummaging in a drawer. “I think they’re still in shock, though. Especially the kids.”

Ellie had a vivid memory of the little girl’s thousand-yard stare. 

“And that old lady making it all the way from Montana? Fuck. She’s either a much bigger badass than she looks, or the luckiest person alive.”

“A little bit of both.” Ellie pictured Agnes on the sled, squinting to keep watch on a world she could hardly see. “Do you know if we still have any old pairs of glasses laying around? Her eyes are pretty bad. Might be worth a try.”

Dina turned to look at Ellie, nodding quietly. “I can check.”

Easy small talk exhausted, Ellie began taking her layers off as Dina pulled up a chair. Removing her last long-sleeve, she winced as the fabric stuck to her arm, attached with dried blood to a gash she didn’t remember getting. It was several inches long and the force of pulling her shirt away had torn it open again.

Dina raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re fine, huh?”

“I’ve had worse.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Dina’s face darkened and she turned her attention to the box of supplies. “It’s going to need stitches.”

Cursing herself silently, Ellie stared at the wound on her forearm, oozing blood and stinging noticeably for the first time. “It was a clicker,” she said after a few seconds, trying to revive the conversation. “They were attacking that family. It pinned me, and I guess I got this without realizing.”

Dina’s eyes flicked up to Ellie’s face for a moment before returning to the antiseptic rag she was preparing. “Good thing we checked, then,” she said more gently.

Wincing at the sharp sting of the antiseptic on the wound, Ellie found herself mesmerized watching Dina gently move the rag across her skin. She thought of all the times the two of them had cleaned each other up after fights that went awry, the tenderness and comfort they had found in one another, and the ache of nostalgia was nearly overwhelming.

“So, how do you like being a medic?”

“It’s good. It’s a lot to learn, but it’s nice to feel like I’m doing something that matters.” Pausing to ring out the rag, Dina looked at Ellie with a hint of amusement. “How are you liking sentry duty?”

“Oh, you know, it’s . . . not any of the things you just said.” Ellie gave a dry laugh. “But it’s something to do.”

“Is that really all you want?” 

It wasn’t a question Ellie was expecting. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “After everything . . . I guess I just didn’t feel ready for anything else.”

Dina frowned and focused on her work quietly for minute. When she spoke again, her voice was measured and deliberate. “Tommy came in about a week ago for some medicine.”

If she noticed the way Ellie stiffened, she didn’t acknowledge it. 

“Oh, yeah?”

“He talked about running into you.” Dina sat back and threw the soiled rag in a nearby bucket. “And about how you finished things with Abby.”

Ellie felt a surge of shame and panic. “You didn’t tell him the truth, did you?”

Dina studied her like something under a microscope. “I didn’t tell him anything,” she said after a long silence. “But what _is_ the truth, Ellie?”

“Exactly what I told you. I swear.” Dropping her eyes, Ellie tried to think of how to explain. “I wasn’t planning on lying to him, it just slipped out. I’m going to tell him, I just . . . I want him to hear it from me.”

Dina evaluated the story quietly. After several seconds, her eyes softened and she nodded.

“Well, you don’t need to worry about me. Tommy and I aren’t exactly best friends these days,” she said, turning her attention back to preparing the suture thread. “Hold your arm out.”

Ellie obliged, watching as Dina threaded the needle. “Any chance I could ask for a real doctor now?”

“Sorry, we’re all out.”

Although the sting of the first stitch made her wince, Ellie found herself calmed by how gently Dina held her arm. Her movements were smooth and even, and each time Ellie flinched, Dina’s thumb rubbed her skin soothingly. It seemed a subconscious act more than one of affection, but Ellie took comfort in it all the same.

Pulling her attention away from the stitches, Ellie looked up. “You and Tommy . . . is it still because of that day at the farm?”

“Sort of.” Although Dina’s movements remained rhythmic as ever, her voice grew rigid. “A few days after I came back to Jackson, I told him you’d gone. I was pretty pissed off. One thing led to another, and it may have ended with me hitting him in the face.”

Despite the weight of the subject, Ellie couldn’t stop a single incredulous bark of laughter. “Wow.”

Dina remained stoic as she shrugged one shoulder, finding the situation less humorous. “Like I said, not the best terms.”

As she sat with the image of it all, Ellie felt the familiar knot begin to tie itself in her throat. The tightly controlled tone of Dina’s voice, the look on Tommy’s face last she’d seen him – thin veneers of normalcy over pain they didn’t want to acknowledge. Pain Ellie knew all too well, and that she’d had a hand in creating.

“It’s not really his fault,” she said, watching Dina closely. “He was an ass that day, but I’m the one that did this.”

Ellie waited anxiously for a response, but Dina said nothing, focusing quietly on her work. After several minutes had passed, Ellie realized the conversation was likely over and she would be left to swallow another mouthful of disappointment and regret. She tried to think of something else to say, but her mind seemed determined to remain blank and she eventually lost herself in watching the movement of the needle.

As Dina closed the final stitch and cut the thread, she stood and turned away to dispose of the supplies. Ellie stared at the rough black line left behind. Clenching and releasing her muscle, she watched as the thread tightened and relaxed along with it, pulling at her skin with the slightest twinge of pain. It looked better than it had before, but it would undoubtedly heal into another scar.

It took her a moment to realize that Dina had turned back to face her, leaning against the counter with her arms crossed and her eyes focused on her shoes, hovering on the edge of what she was about to say.

“If I ask you a question,” she said slowly, “will you promise to answer it honestly?”

Ellie felt her breath catch. “Yeah.”

“If Tommy hadn’t come to the farm that day . . . would you still have left?”

Ellie tried to think of how to answer. They had veered deeply into the territory of what she still didn’t know how to talk about. She didn’t know how to be honest without hurting Dina worse than she already had, and the spiral of panic she felt only made the hope of responding well seem even farther out of reach.

“I mean . . . I wouldn’t have known there was anywhere to go.” As soon as the words met the air, Ellie cringed at how empty they sounded. 

Dina’s expression was unreadable.

“I think it was bigger than Abby by then, though,” Ellie admitted, forcing herself to keep going. “I don’t know what it would have been if it wasn’t Tommy, but . . . I think I would have had to go eventually.”

Saying the words aloud and seeing the hurt on Dina’s face made Ellie’s heart sink. She wanted to take it back, or soften it, or explain it in a way that made sense to someone outside her own head, but she didn’t know how.

“Why?” Dina asked, the word sounding like a plea.

“I . . . I can’t explain it. It wouldn’t make sense.”

“Oh, fuck that, Ellie! After everything we’ve been through, don’t you dare act like I can’t understand.”

“No! That’s not –” Ellie clenched her hands tightly into fists, frustrated at herself. To her surprise, the words seemed to spring forth on their own. “I feel like I choke on the words every time I try to say them. Like my mind goes blank and my throat fucking closes and I forget how to talk. There are all these things that I know I should say, things I know you deserve to hear, but I just fucking _can’t_!”

The electrical buzz grew to a roar, filling every corner of the gaping silence. Ellie couldn’t look at Dina, absentmindedly wringing her hands and trying desperately to steady herself.

When Dina spoke again after what felt like a lifetime, her voice was soft. “My shift is over. Walk with me?”

Taken aback by the sharp shift in tone, Ellie nodded. The women said nothing as they gathered their things and Dina led them out the back exit. The sharp chill of the night air was a welcome change for Ellie, and as she focused on the feeling of the breeze against her skin, she felt herself growing calmer. 

Dina walked with a purpose a few steps ahead, and Ellie followed her without question. The streets had started emptying, most people having retreated already to the warmth of their homes as the temperature plummeted toward the frigid lows it would soon reach. They passed through the shops of main street, most shuttered for the day, some – like the Tipsy Bison – alive with energy and noise muffled by glass and wood. As they passed into the adjacent neighborhoods, Ellie caught the occasional glimpse of the people inside the houses: a woman doing dishes, an old man reading by the glow of a lantern, a couple not much older than she and Dina consoling a crying child. She didn’t know any of them by name.

As the minutes dragged on without a word, Ellie began to agonize over what she should say, or if she should say anything at all. Dina was clearly lost in thought, showing no signs of the hurt or the anger she had displayed in the exam room, and although Ellie felt nearly desperate to understand what was going on in her head, she didn’t dare ask. She was still stuck in that mental spiral when Dina finally came to a stop at the playground behind the daycare.

The déjà vu was a like a slap to the face when Dina leaned against the fence as she had that day so long ago, staring at the empty play structures. Ellie remembered how she felt that morning – tense and anxious just as she was now, but for reasons so much more innocent.

“JJ loves this playground,” said Dina, breaking the long silence with a sad smile. “He’d spend hours going down the slide if I let him.”

Ellie pictured the little boy running awkwardly in snow boots from the base of the slide to the stairs, his huge smile and infectious laugh, and she ached to be there with him.

Beside her, Dina began running her hand back and forth across the snow on the top of the fence, packing it down into a smooth icy layer. 

“You know, Talia would never talk to me either,” she said after a long time. “Something happened to her back in New Mexico. Something bad enough to send us running, to make her jumpy and give her nightmares, but she would never tell me what it was. I can put the pieces together well enough now, but at the time I didn’t understand. I just watched my sister fade away. And even now, I wonder if things might have been different if she hadn’t been stuck dealing with everything on her own.”

Ellie was startled by the abrupt change of topic, her own anxiety momentarily forgotten. Dina talked about Talia a lot, but it was usually the good stories, the things she wanted to remember. She very rarely talked about the details of her death, and she had never mentioned this before at all. 

There was a look of deep pain in Dina’s eyes as she finally looked up from the fence to meet Ellie’s gaze. “You do the same thing, El. You just hold it all in, and I feel like I’ve watched it tear you apart the same way it did to her. Except _you_ don’t have to. I was a little kid, and Talia had to be an adult, and it was just a fucking shitty situation. But you and I are partners – you don’t have to do all this alone. I don’t know how I could have made that any clearer.”

Ellie couldn’t control the familiar shrinking sensation that seized her muscles and threatened to freeze her vocal cords again. “You couldn’t have,” she managed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” said Dina, reaching out a hand and gently nudging Ellie’s face up as she tried to look away. “Just _try!_ It doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it can be a complete fucking mess – I don’t care! But please, if you feel you owe me anything at all, just say _something_ to help me understand. Because hearing you say you were always going to leave . . .” A tear slid down Dina’s face and she paused to collect herself. “Right now, it feels like everything we had was just a giant fucking lie.”

“No!” Ellie was horrified at how Dina had interpreted what she’d said. “That’s not it at all, I –”

She didn’t know where her sentence was going, had no idea where or how to begin. Drawing a shuddering breath, she looked up at the dark expanse of sky, filled with its glimmering stars, watching the cloud of her breath appear and evaporate. 

“I felt like I was dying.” She hadn’t consciously planned to say it, but once she did, the rest seemed to flow on its own. “A little more every day. But it was never because of you – you and JJ were the only things that mattered to me at all, the only reason I hung on. But you couldn’t fix it. _I_ couldn’t fix it. I tried so hard to be there with you, I wanted that to be enough, but nothing I did could make the feeling go away.”

Ellie’s mind drifted backward to the days at the farm she’d never told Dina about – the long hunts where she would sometimes sit for hours in the woods and contemplate what it would feel like not to get up again, the moments after she’d killed the deer or the rabbit or the grouse and she would find herself staring at the gun in her hands with thoughts she was too afraid to name. The energy it had taken to lock it all away each time she opened the gate to come home, the shame she felt when Dina would greet her at the door with a kiss and JJ would laugh and reach out to her.

Tears stinging at her eyes, Ellie forced herself to go on. “I’m not sure how much longer I could have held on. And when Tommy showed up and opened that door, I thought maybe that was the last piece, you know? Maybe if I could just finish what we started, it would take all these thoughts away and just let me be the person we both wanted me to be.”

If Ellie had been able to look at Dina, she would have seen the stricken look on the other woman’s face, the tears running quietly down her cheeks.

“But then I had her,” she went on, her mind a thousand miles away, suddenly surrounded by sand instead of snow. “I was holding her under the water. And then I just . . . couldn’t. I just knew that wouldn’t fix it either. I don’t know if anything can, but _fuck_ . . . Dina, it was _never_ a lie! It was never you I wanted to leave behind.”

It was a heavy silence that followed in the wake of Ellie’s admission, an almost physical force that bowed their heads and pulled their eyes to the ground. For a long time, neither could think of anything to say, and it felt like the world was muted but for the crunching of snow and the sniffling of tears both had stopped bothering to conceal. 

“You never said anything,” Dina finally whispered.

“I tried. That day in the kitchen.”

Dina stared at Ellie quietly, reliving their last painful exchange. “Do you still feel the same way?”

Crushing the snow beneath the toe of her boot, Ellie thought seriously about the question.

“Yes and no,” she admitted. “Everything still hurts like hell. But . . . I don’t know. There isn’t that question of _‘what if_ ’ anymore. I think that helps.”

While Ellie kept her eyes glued to the ground, Dina stared at Ellie as though transfixed, feeling too many things to make sense of any one of them individually.

“You have to find a way to talk to me – or to _someone_ ,” she said finally. “Keeping it all in is destroying you, and I think it has been since the day Joel died.”

There was no denying the truth of Dina’s words. Numbly, Ellie found herself wondering when her tendency for silence had really started, how she could break a habit that had come to feel more like a personality trait.

“And if you don’t care about that, if you hate yourself _that_ much,” Dina went on, making Ellie flinch, “then do it for me. Or for JJ, or Tommy, or Joel, or anyone else that I believe you _do_ still care about. Because you aren’t just punishing yourself.”

The words hit like a truck and left Ellie at a loss for what to say, but it was clear Dina expected a response. Searching through the tangled web of her thoughts, she pulled out the only thing that felt honest.

“I’ll try.”

It wasn’t much, but it seemed enough for Dina. She nodded slightly, the dim light casting shadows across her face, illuminating the dried tear marks and dark circles beneath her eyes. She looked as hollow in that moment as Ellie felt.

“I’m sorry,” said Dina, her voice barely above a whisper. “That I didn’t understand how bad it was.”

“I didn’t do a very good job of saying it.”

For the first time in longer than either could remember, it felt like the well of words had run dry – not because of Ellie’s reticence or Dina’s resentment, but because they had actually pulled the bucket to the surface and sipped. The silence that fell next was different than the ones that had come before, although neither could quite identify how. 

“I need to get home,” said Dina finally. “JJ’s asleep by now. Lee and Robin can’t leave until I get back.”

“Can I walk you?” asked Ellie hesitantly.

Dina nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

It was another quiet trek, but this time they walked slowly side by side. It took only a couple of minutes to reach Dina’s house, its tiny front light aglow, seeping warmth into the night. The curtains were all drawn shut, but through the thin fabric Ellie could make out the silhouette of a person with a cane walking across the room beyond. Ellie wondered what Jesse’s parents would think of her now – not only the person who had gotten their son killed, or who had rudely avoided talking with them whenever they visited, but also the person who abandoned their grandson and the woman they saw as a daughter. 

The women paused in the street outside, standing quietly for some time, at a loss for how to end the interaction neither of them yet knew what to make of.

“I mean it, Dina – I’ll try,” said Ellie suddenly, repeating her words from earlier with more resolve. She forced herself to look Dina in the eyes. “I promise.”

Folding her arms tightly across her chest, Dina studied her for a moment. “Look, I . . . I don’t want to wake JJ tonight. But you could come by for lunch tomorrow if you want to see him. If you’re free.”

The offer was so far beyond Ellie’s expectations that she was stunned silent for a moment before she could fully process the invitation. “Yeah,” she finally managed to choke out. “I’d love to.”

“Okay. Before you come, though, I need you to think about what you want from seeing him,” Dina warned gently. “If you just want to be the fun babysitter who hangs out sometimes, or if you want to be part of his life like before. You can see him no matter what you decide, but I need you to commit either way. I won’t let him be disappointed if you’re planning to leave again.”

Ellie immediately opened her mouth to respond, but Dina cut her off before she could begin.

“Don’t. Sleep on it. Tonight’s been a lot already, and I need to know you’ve really thought it through.”

Stifling the urgency she felt, Ellie forced herself to stop and nod.

“Okay.” Dina took a step toward the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Ellie watched as Dina walked up the steps and disappeared into the house.

* * *

_We actually talked. I’m going to see JJ._

_I almost walked away from all of this._


End file.
